Et In Terra Pax Hominibus

Apostleship - A Family Affair?

2009-01-31T08:57:00.001-09:00

Sometimes I amuse myself by imagining Jesus and the Apostles in situations they might see if they grew up in the America that I know and love. When I was a kid one of the things I did was run around in knee high grass stuffing grasshoppers in a glass jar, so I imagined James and John (the Apostle) headed home with a clay pot full of grasshoppers and James (in his wisdom) warned his younger brother to, "Keep them away from John [the Baptist]. He'll eat anything!"
This all comes to mind because of the familial relationships the significant figures of Christianity had to each other and to Jesus. Of course everyone knows John the Baptist was the son of the aunt of Mary. James the Elder and John the Apostle were brothers who's mother was the sister of Mary (which also sheds some light on the incident of Jesus leaving Mary under John's care at the foot of the cross). Peter and Andrew were the sons of Zebedee who was related to Joseph. Joseph of Aramethea was, allegedly, the great uncle of Mary. According to Eusebius, Jude was the brother of Jesus. This must have been a step brother which has been speculated by a few people to be from Joseph who was a widower before he married Mary. James the Younger may also have been a step brother, but that is in dispute among scholars. Of course not all the apostles were related to Jesus. Judas and Matthew definately had no blood relation of any notability, but that is not to say they never knew each other.
Imagine Jesus and the Apostles at Thanksgiving Day dinner, all at the kids' table and Jesus says, "What are people saying this gravy is made of?" They said in reply, "Beef, others chicken, still others say it is made of power." And he asked them, "But what do you say it is?" Peter said to him in reply, "It is turkey gravy." And he answered, "Blessed are you Simon son of Jonah, for this has not been revealed to you by man...your mother told you!" These things must make one wonder about Jesus' interactions with the future Apostles as children. Did the kids all know where Jesus was when Mary and Joseph looked for him for three days in Jerusalem? In all the sermons I ever heard on the baptism of the Lord I was always given the impression that John had never met Jesus before, but this seems unreasonable in light of their relationship as cousins. It seems that they should have spent a lot of time together as children and when the Gospel accounts of the Baptism are read there is no indication of unfamiliarity, quite the contrary, in fact they appear to know each other well.
This all makes fully half of the Apostles step brothers or first cousins of Jesus, and it tends to make me wonder if Jesus was close childhood friends with all the Apostles. While it may be interesting to think about we will not know for certain any time on this side of the Jordan.

A Non-Mosaic Torah

2008-11-15T12:40:00.005-09:00

“From that tree you shall not eat; the moment you eat from it you are surely doomed to die.” Of course God was not lying to Adam. The price for sin is blood. When Paul said, “According to the law almost everything is purified by blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness,” he was not presenting new information to the Jews, he was simply emphasizing what they already knew to be true. Getting there was a long road though. The first time God purified the world was in Noah’s Flood. Shortly after Noah’s flood God brought Abram into the world and promised him to make a great nation of him because of his faith. Three generations later He saved Abraham’s family from starvation by placing one of the children in a position of authority in Egypt, where he had knowledge of the coming famine and the prudence and position to prepare for it. Four hundred years later the Israelites needed salvation from their gracious hosts of old. With the night of the Passover, the political nation of Israel was born and the people who had found God’s favor found themselves being brought to the foot of Mount Sinai, where they were to receive the Law of Moses and a formal system of restitution and forgiveness.

For the first time in history man and God had an opportunity to share in a bond never experienced on Earth outside the Garden of Eden – that of mans’ sins covered over in the blood of restitution. This was very specific and many requirements had to have been met in order for the sacrifice to be a valid offering to God. The sacrifices had to be in the right place, performed by the right people with the right animals. The priests had to be ordained ministers and wear the right clothes. God’s decision on who were to fulfill all these “rights” rested on Abraham’s faithfulness. The unique relationship the Israelites shared with the Lord through the Law bore many fruits. It put them in a place of moral, spiritual, physical and mental superiority to the rest of the world. This was God’s family. They were His people and it was the Law that was the vehicle that brought them to this exalted position. Without the opportunity to stand before God without the burden of sin on their persons, they would not have been able to achieve anything more than mediocrity.

This was the stage the Christ stepped out onto. In the fullness of time, God come down from Heaven and made His dwelling among us. If Jesus is truly the manifestation of God then Mary is the personification of the perfect Jewish society, but that is also a different discussion. Because the blood of goats and lambs did not remove the stain of sin and completely restore man to God, a better sacrifice was called for. God wanted a better relationship, one made perfect. While the Law was perfect, the sacrifice did nothing more than cover the sins of the people and they had to make the same sacrifice over and over again. “For this I was born and for this I came into the world,” is what Jesus told His disciples. With the backdrop of salvation history, the world was ready to move on to the perfection of the person and work of Christ Jesus the Lord through the framework given to the Israelites in the Law. This would be a valid sacrifice made in the right place, by the right people who wore the right clothes in a perfect framework for the forgiveness of sins once and for all.

If the Torah is not an historical set of documents that was not written by Moses but was written by several authors and redactors over the course of four hundred years (or so) finally finding completion a thousand years after the death of Moses, as the skeptical, liberal critics suggest, the religion of the Hebrews is nothing more than any pagan religion coming out of the Ancient Orient and it holds no more weight with God than any of the contemporary religions of its day.
The Documentary Theory asserts that four major documents make up the Torah as we know it today, namely the Elohist and the Yahwist Documents which were written to explain the history of the Northern and Southern Kingdoms respectively which were married by the Deuteronomic Code and later completed by the Priestly Code which was devised by the priesthood to consolidate power and finally completing the first five books of the Bible. Many even deny the actual existence of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as historical figures but flippantly explain them away as national myth. This all has very serious consequences for the faithful believer of Judaism and Christianity because it presupposes a piecemeal compilation of the Law of Moses under which the restitution of sins is obtained. If this was not given to Moses on Mount Sinai in its entirety then the claim that it is from God is false! That would mean it does not truly cover mans’ sin in any way shape or form. How then is it different than the cult worship of Inanna in Ancient Sumer? How is it different than the worship of Osiris in Egypt, Dionysius in Greece or Apollo in Rome?

The difference between the ancient religion given to Moses and the surrounding pagan cults is exactly that is was supposed to have been given by the true and living God. How is this religion different if the practice of Temple worship was never instituted in Jerusalem until 621 BC?! if monotheism was never part of Judaism until the Babylonian Exile?! The pillar that holds up the structure of the practice of the religion given to Moses is its ability to restore man’s relationship to God. It allows man to stand before God with his sins covered in the blood of restitution. No other religion has that capability. There is no washing away of sins without a complete law coming down from Mount Sinai in the hands of Moses. Suppose there were no Tabernacle, no Ark of the Covenant and no Lavitical Priesthood upon Israel’s exit from bondage in Egypt. Suppose there were no Commandments and no prescribed liturgical practice by which the Hebrews were to live. That would mean God had no direct intervention in the course of human events, that He had no desire to restore man to Himself and that the world Jesus was born into was completely devoid of religious validity in the eyes of God.

The Apologetics Study Bible

2008-10-20T11:23:00.001-08:00

For my birthday my parents gave me The Apologetics Study Bible, which I have grown to love and recommend for everyone. It is put together by the Southern Baptists rather than the Catholics but the scholarship is the highest quality. The thing that impressed me the most was the commentary.

During the Enlightenment a few ideas were proposed that have slowly begun to dominate Bible scholarship which are just false (and sometimes subtly, sometimes not so subtly deny the divinity of Christ). One example is Spinoza. In his Treatise on Religion and the State he writes:
"Sober and literal statements do not move the soul; if Moses had said that it was merely the East wind (as we gather from a later passage) that cleared a path for them through the Red Sea, it would have made little impression on the minds of the masses he was leading....But when interpreted literally, it is full of errors, contradictions, and obvious impossibilities-as that the Pentateuch was written by Moses."

This claim is contradicted by Jesus when he was on the road to Emmaus. He began His explanation of the crucifixion saying, "Beginning with Moses and all the prophets..." He also asserts several times in the Gospels directly that Moses wrote the Pentateuch. I think His testimony is a little more dependable than a disaffected and misguided philosopher who was excommunicated from his congregation for heresy (which Spinoza was). In "Nature and God" Spinoza represents our "problem of evil" as our struggle to reconcile the evil of the world with the goodness of God and concludes that good and bad are mere human inventions which are not relative to God but our own individual tastes and desires. Couple that with his later statement in the same piece of work that "neither intellect nor will pertains to the nature of God." That all sounds like prime time moral relativism to me, but his thoughts and ideas have crept into Christian theology, so much so that it is taken as a matter of fact by so many "Bible scholars" now. I have begun to hear this garbage come out of the mouths of priests almost every time they speak about the Pentateuch.

Of course the first thing I read was the commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (I wrote a defense of the traditional view of it's authorship here) and was delighted to see both sides of the story presented. The authors of the commentary on the Gospel of Mark seem to have more of an open mind than any other Biblical scholars I have heard or read, other than Father Marconi (an historical documentarian and Dominican priest who visited Anchorage and gave several classes on the Apostles John and Paul). In fact Fr. Marconi is the only Catholic priest I have ever heard give more than the biased, one-sided, liberal view of the "Q" document which is part of a theory that alleges Matthew, Mark and Luke came from a "source" document written by an unknown author who may or may not have been an Apostle. My question is, why does a church which claims to be Apostolic in nature resort to an unknown author of the most basic texts of our religion when we have reliable documentation that asserts the same texts to be written by those who we claim founded our church? The idea of the "Q" Document also came out of the Enlightenment period from the German Skeptics.

Apart from the commentaries on the books of the Bible that present a traditional (and in my humble opinion a correct) view of the books of the Bible there are articles dispersed throughout the Bible that address specific questions such as the relationship of Christianity to other religions, the reliability of the Bible account and archaeological evidence that support the claims of the Bible. One article in particular asks the question "Is Evolution fact or fantasy?" The conclusion is that the part of evolution that is true is not very interesting and the part that is interesting is not very true. This has been my view ever since I heard of Darwinian Evolution, so of course I was delighted to see another write such a view. There are brief biological outlines of prominent Christian Apologists as well as "Twisted Scripture" excerpts, which describe how various religious movements have erroneously interpreted Holy Scripture throughout the Christian Era. My only beef with it is that it leaves out the Apocrypha (which could only be expected seeing as to who put the edition together). Over all the Apologetics Study Bible is an excellent Bible and I recommend it for everyone.

Prayer

2008-05-01T22:17:00.001-08:00

Christian mysticism comes to us in the writings of the saints. It is the achievement of union with Almighty God, and its fruit is prayer and the manifestation of God to the World through His saints.

…Presently the window opened, and Brother Matthew looked out between the bars, with his clear eyes and graying beard.
“Hullo Brother,” I said.
He recognized me, glanced at the suitcase, and said, “This time you are here to stay?”
“Yes, Brother, if you will pray for me,” I said.
Brother nodded and raised his hand to close the window. “That’s what I’ve been doing,” he said, “praying for you.”…
…Father Joachim, the guest master, came out of the door of the monastery and crossed the garden with his hands under his scapular and his eyes fixed on the cement walk. He only raised them when he was near me, and then he grinned.
“Oh, it’s you,” he said.
I did not give him the chance to ask if I had come to stay. I said: “Yes, Father, this time I want to be a novice – if I can.”
-Thomas Merton, Seven Story Mountain.

I could not stop laughing as I read about Thomas Merton’s experience entering the monastery and his novitiate. He felt a sense of victory over having met the end of conversation. He described the silence as something that pervades everything, including the stones that make up the buildings. Merton described a year in which a tremendously large number of vocations flooded the novitiate. One of the questions that occurred to him regarding some of the novices was whether they had experienced the spiritual desert too soon and too intensely, whether or not they would have stayed in the monastery had they been better prepared to go through the desert?

There was a quote I heard which I was always opposed to until I was able to put it in context with the spiritual desert. “Pain is the touchstone of all spiritual growth.” What Merton called the spiritual desert has also been called the dark night by St. John of the Cross. It is an emptiness, almost like a sadness or a desolation, but it is a movement of the soul rather than an emotion. It is also a natural progression in everyone’s spiritual life. God seduces us. He entices us with the things we love and yearn for. We are sent consolation, joy and elation, again as movements of the soul rather than emotions. In my own life it has been in solitude, silence and prayer that joy and elation has been experienced, as well as in the active life, during liturgical practice (which I consider semi-active, semi-contemplative), in bringing Holy Communion to shut-ins and the incarcerated, in speaking with the wounded, in silence with the wounded and in the company of the dying and their families. After the seduction comes the let-down, the desert, the dark night. The desert may come upon us at our invitation or at God’s command.

St. John divides the dark night of the soul into three groups, the dark nights of the senses, of faith, and of the will/memory. The night of the senses is the onset of spiritual growth. It is the purification of the soul by the deprivation of worldly things for the pursuit of Divine union. St. John described our senses as the windows the soul uses to peer out at the world. When we empty ourselves of the desires of the senses we are able to tread the path towards union with God.

Within the night of the senses we are able to enter further into the night of faith. This night is darker than the night of the senses. It is an emptying, or a resignation and detachment of our understanding, perception, feelings and imaginings for the sake of Divine union. This complete resignation and detachment allows God free reign within the soul and He illuminates it with faith. The result of the dark night of faith results in the purging, or putting to death, the understanding, the abandonment of the intellect, and the grounding of the soul in faith. Our memory is our knowledge formed by the senses. As we reduce our memory, God is able to perfect our nature and transform it. A will transformed for the sake of charity is able to perform works of faith which gain great merit. The verse that struck me was, “Love covers a multitude of sins.”

This all seems like a grand plan when one invites it, but sometimes it catches us unaware. I went for about two and a half months in the desert one time. It seemed as though the only pleasure I could find was in choir practice for two hours every Thursday night. Even Mass on Sunday morning left me feeling empty. It wasn’t the first time I had been through the desert. I was well aware of the writings of St. John and Merton. That brought no consolation though. I felt abandoned by God. I knew I wasn’t. The movements of my soul deceived my emotions and all I could do was struggle through to the end. There is only one time in my whole life I ever remember inviting the dark night. It didn’t come, not when I wanted it to anyway.

The point of it is that I was properly prepared for the dark night. When it came, my soul was grounded in faith. Intellectually, I knew what my emotions told me was a lie, but that did not diminish the feelings of isolation from God. If I were any less prepared, it would have been easy to harden my heart and move towards a position of unbelief. Could I end up as an atheist or agnostic? Is that how people lose their faith?

Happy Pascha

2008-04-27T12:31:00.000-08:00

Happy Pascha to all our Eastern brothers and sisters! The Lord is risen!

The Gospel of Matthew

2008-04-27T12:30:00.002-08:00

A vein of theology infecting the Church today makes an attempt to discern who the "real" authors of the Gospels were and when they wrote. One of the claims is that the Gospel of Matthew, long considered to be the first Gospel (by Matthew, hence the name), was actually written after 70 AD by an author who was not a disciple of Jesus. This claim is based on the facts that Matthew and Mark are so similar to each other that one must have been copied from the other and the inclusion of the predicted destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in the Gospel of Matthew which did occur in 70 AD.

Papias, bishop of Heirapolis, who was a student of the Apostle John and a companion of Polycarp (also a student of John), wrote that Matthew was the first to record a Gospel in writing, which he did for the Israelites in the Hebrew language. Irenaeus, bishop of Lyon, wrote "Against Heresies" at the end of the Second Century. To the best of my knowledge that has never been disputed. In it he said:
Matthew published his gospel among the Hebrews in their own tongue, when Peter and Paul were preaching the Gospel in Rome and founding the church there. After their departure Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, himself handed down to us in writing the substance of Peter's preaching. Luke, the follower of Paul, set down in a book the gospel preached by his teacher. Then John, the disciple of the Lord, who also leaned on his breast, himself produced his gospel, while he was living at Ephesus in Asia.

There is a lot of information we can glean about the dating of the Gospels from this writing. Peter and Paul were both martyred in 67, so we know that Matthew wrote his gospel before that date. Mark wrote his gospel after that year because the people of Rome loved Peter so much they insisted Mark record his teachings. It is plausible that Mark and Luke were writing their Gospels at the same time. John wrote his gospel sometime before 74 because that is when he left Ephesus. We must be able to assume the accuracy of Ireneaus's statements because of his proximity to the events. If one should question his accuracy by virtue of being recorded some one and a quarter century later, I will offer the example of Emily Dickenson as a response. She did not publish more than a dozen of her poems during her own life time, but today (122 years after her death), we know with strong authority that she wrote the poems generally credited to her based on our proximity to the event and the witness of persons close to her.

First let's establish the authority of the Epistle to the Romans. It is universally accepted without question that Paul is the author of this epistle. Eusebius, in "The History of the Church" dates Paul's execution to 67 AD, which is generally accepted as accurate. Paul makes four clear references to the Gospel of Matthew in his Epistle to the Romans. In Romans 9:5 Paul wrote "...theirs (the Israelites) the patriarchs, and from them, according to the flesh, is the Messiah." This statement is a reference to Matthew's genealogy of Jesus found in 1:1-16. Again, Romans 12:14 finds Paul exhorting the faithful to "Bless those who persecute, bless and do not curse them." This is exactly what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount found in Matthew 5:38-48. In Romans Chapter Two Paul entreats Christians to abstain from judgment of others and follow the path of a true disciple in the same manner Jesus did in the end of the Sermon on the Mount (7:1-5, 21-23). This is not an exhaustive list by any means, but it suffices to present the argument that the Gospel according to Matthew was written before the year 67, not after the year 70.

Philo was a Jewish philosopher from the city of Alexandria. Although he was trained in the Greek tradition, his emphasis was on the Jewish canon of Holy Scripture. Born in 20 BC he died in 50 AD. This is all significant to Matthew's Gospel because of one of the things Philo observed about the church in Alexandria:
They read the sacred scriptures, and study their ancestral wisdom philosophically, allegorizing it, since they regard the literal sense as symbolic of a hidden reality revealed in figures. They posses also short works by early writers, the founders of their sect, who left many specimens of the allegorical method, which they take as their models, following the system on which their predecessors worked.

Paul’s writings are universally given dates of authorship after the death of Philo, so we can exclude any of his writings from those Philo mentions. The Letter of James is concerned almost exclusively with moral conduct, not with allegorical interpretation, so it, likewise, may be excluded. 1 & 2 Peter are dated to the mid Sixties, also too late. All three of John's letters are given a date in the late First Century along with Jude. The Revelation to St. John is well known to be from the Apostle John while exiled on the Island of Patmos, so it may also be excluded from consideration of what Philo was referring to. That leaves us with the Gospel of Matthew, which fills the bill exactly, written by a founder of the sect with many specimens of allegorical interpretation!

Swimming the Tiber II

2008-04-13T14:45:00.001-08:00

I remember the disappointment I felt with the news that nothing was going to happen until September. There was another devout Catholic at work. He was about ten years older than me and very knowledgeable about the Church. He devoted his college years to learning Church history (other than his college studies, which only included engineering) and encouraged me to read a lot. He always asked if the books I read were published by Ignatius Press. I didn’t understand why that was so important to him, but I do now. I eventually asked him to sponsor me in my confirmation, which he was delighted to do. All summer I eagerly awaited the beginning of RCIA. As usual, I loved it. I loved everything about being Catholic, except that all the people who ran RCIA kept saying that we would become Catholic on Easter. Didn’t they understand? I became Roman Catholic on the day I visited Our Lady of Las Vegas.

My study of the Church began with the Saints. St Francis of Assisi, St. Francis de Sales, St. Teresa of Avila, St. Therese of Lisieux, St. John of the Cross, St. Thomas Merton and the like filled my book shelves. Prayer was an ongoing search for me. I looked everywhere I knew where to. Finally going on a silent retreat at a Carmelite retreat house, I was introduced to the Liturgy of the Hours. I knew instantly that was what I was searching for. I took an interest in the different religious orders and their founders. The realization that history is not about places and dates eventually dawned on me. It is about people. I love people. Since then I have gobbled up history books and another realization came. History is about God. The primary purpose for learning history is to learn the Divine waltz we are dancing, to look back and try to see how God seduces us, how He longs for us and what He does to approach us. How could I have missed that all those years growing up?

My Baptist theology had deep roots though. My complete submission took a full six years, a little at a time, always a little more to go to fully embrace the traditional teachings. I ended up taking the advice of my sponsor and jumped in with both feet on learning Church history. The more I learned, the more I loved it and the more I was able to give myself to the Church. I quickly began to attend Mass at 6:00 PM every Tuesday at St. Joe’s. I was on fire! As soon as I could I became a lector and a Eucharistic minister. For the next three years I helped in RCIA and I helped start a Bible study at St. Francis. For a while I was at church every day of the week, I just couldn’t get enough of it. My primary purpose for becoming a Eucharistic minister was to bring the Eucharist to shut-ins. I wanted to bring it to hospitals, but there were none in my parish bounds, so I took Holy Communion to a couple total care and partial care centers. Eventually I began to bring Holy Communion to the county pokey too, which I found to be my favorite form of service. Our Lady held Mass every morning at 6:30 so I added Fridays to my Mass schedule. A little at a time I began to add more days until I was going to Mass six days a week. I also moved across town, which I used as an excuse to begin going to Mass at St. Joe’s on Sundays. It truly was an excuse because then I had to drive even further to get to church Sunday morning than I would have if I had stayed in St. Francis. I eventually joined the choir at St. Joe’s and took on service at the Shrine of the Most Holy Redeemer (which is on the Las Vegas Strip).

Right after I moved and starting going to St. Joe’s Parish I also became interested in Greek Orthodoxy. On several Sundays I attended both a Catholic Mass and the Divine Liturgy at St. John Greek Orthodox Church (which ended just in time to zip over to the noon Mass at St. Joe’s). The Eastern services were so mystifying! I was also excited to see all the women wearing nice dresses or skirts and all the men wore suits with ties (a few just wore polo shirts or sweaters with jackets, but that was okay too). The vestments were so elaborate and beautiful, incense was used every Sunday, the Liturgy was sung – all of it! and no one left before the end of the service. Everyone got up and kissed the priest’s hand before leaving the sanctuary. It was very exotic! It was also very exciting. I felt transported to another age, another place. I was also learning about history. The Church Councils and the Filioque scandalized me. Having made a close friend who was just returning to the Orthodox Church (He introduced me to blogging. His site is A…Sinner, over in the blog roll) I grew more and more intoxicated with the East. He attended St. Paul’s Russian Orthodox Church on the east side of town (the side I also lived on). We spent a lot of time together and our favorite thing to talk about was the Church. I attended several Divine Liturgies at St. Paul.

After a year or two I finally decided to leave the Latin Church for the Greek. It was such an agonizing debate for me. I loved the Roman Church with every fiber of my being, but I had a tremendous pull towards the Greek Church. It didn’t help that I heard a lot of Anti-Catholic rhetoric at the time. That never affected my love for the Church, but it had a strong impact on my thinking. Maybe I would grow to love the Greek Church as much as I do the Roman, at least I made a habit of telling myself that. Then something strange happened. I felt an overwhelming urge to learn Latin! This from the same person who vehemently denounced the practice of the Roman Church of holding on to an antiquated language that no one could understand for so long. It shocked me, but I figured it was God’s way of telling me to remain in the Latin Church. That was about four years ago. My love for Catholicism has only grown and I have come to form some very definite beliefs about the Filioque (I am no longer scandalized) and the relationship between the East and the West. Reunion remains foremost in my heart. The final turning point for me was in the confessional booth. I was so tired of fighting. For the most part I was on board with the teachings of the Church, but there were just a couple key issues that I hadn’t surrendered on. Only a year previously I had surrendered on the use of birth control. That was probably the hardest to swallow because it still sticks out in my mind. I do not even remember what else I had refused to admit the Roman Catholic Church was right on and I was wrong. That was me just being obstinate.

At the time I was experiencing emotionally the hardest time in my entire life so I turned to the Church more than ever before. I was celebrating the Sacrament of Reconciliation every other week. Only one other person was in line that day, so I only had a short time to make an examination of conscience, so I sat down with a short list. As soon as I sat down a new article for confession came to mind and I told the priest, “I have always considered myself to be the final authority for all matters of faith and theology in my own life and I want to submit to the teachings of the Church.” Six years after that fateful day in Our Lady of Las Vegas I was finally able to give myself fully to Rome and I do not think I have ever been more liberated in my spirituality. Scott Hahn certainly got it right when he said, “Home, sweet Rome.”

Swimming the Tiber

2008-04-11T12:39:00.001-08:00

My dad was born into a devoted Roman Catholic family. He grew up as an altar boy and the whole nine yards. My mom grew up as a devoted Southern Baptist. After they got married my dad became a Southern Baptist and that is the church I was baptized in. I still remember that night clearly. It was late in the evening when we arrive at church. I went upstairs to a changing room where I was given a white gown to put on. There was a woman there with the hand full of us getting baptized. I wondered what she was doing there. She looked as old as dirt to me, who knows, she may have been only in her Forty’s. But why didn’t she get baptized at the right time? Doesn’t everyone do it when they’re five? At the appointed time we were all ushered to the top of the stairs above the baptismal pool and we were called down one at a time. The preacher asked me if I wanted to be baptized, which confused me. Why would I do all this stuff to get baptized if I didn’t want to do it? I didn’t know he had to ask me that before dunking me three times in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. I remember wondering if I was going to be scared to go under the water, but I wasn’t. That was the first thing I thought stepping into the pool, “I’m not scared.” When my family got home that night my parents sent my brother and sister up to bed and I stayed down stairs to talk with my parents. They asked me if I understood what happened tonight, which I did, and if I understood what Jesus did, which I did. I am not sure if we spoke about anything else but I remember being amazed at the depth of my understanding of God and His action in my life. Of course, I was well prepared for that night. My dad taught Sunday school and I loved the Old Testament stories. I remember learning about the Garden of Eden, Noah’s flood and why we see rainbows (which always represented God to me, to this very day I think “Every time I put My bow in the sky I will remember My promise to you,” whenever I see one), the destruction of Sodom, Abraham and Isaac, the flight out of Egypt, David and Goliath, Daniel in the lions’ den, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednago. I knew those stories very well but I never remember learning the New Testament stories (except Jesus feeding the multitudes because one of the hero’s of the story book I had was a boy named Joel, about my age, who brought the fish to Jesus), but I know I knew the Gospel because I knew all about Jesus.

When I was seven we moved from Anchorage, Alaska to Jacksonville, Florida (where it finally made sense to be Southern Baptist!) because my dad entered a seminary school there. We only stayed one year before he joined the Army though. We used to go to church twice a week, but now we didn’t go at all. I never gave it much thought. To keep quite during church my brother and I used to bring toys and play in the back of the church. I remember bringing He-Man action figures one time, but I felt it was heretical because the toys were too big! It didn’t matter any more. When I was a preteen and a teenager I began to read the Gospels at night lying in bed. Our family read the Bible after dinner sometimes and my dad (who I thought knew everything in the world) would teach us the finer points of Baptist theology. I suppose I had a prayer life suitable for my age, but something happened in my middle teen years. The cares of this world stopped drawing me closer to God and began to blot Him out. My love for the Lord never diminished and my faith never diminished but my attention dropped like a rock. When I was seventeen I was on my way to school one morning and the idea occurred to me, “You should become a priest.” That was immediately supplanted with the thought that I would rather have a family. I was curious why a Southern Baptist boy would think about becoming a Roman Catholic priest. When I was nineteen I joined the Navy and began to try to live up to the poor reputation of sailors. I was pretty good at that. It seemed that I just coasted along. For several reasons, mostly my hedonistic life style and my disgust with President Clinton, I decided to leave the Navy after only five years instead of twenty.

My life was about to change dramatically. I moved to Fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada! I started to work in civil engineering and land surveying. I felt like I found a really good job at a small but very good firm – Alpha Engineering. Right at the end of my enlistment in the Navy I had just about as much fun as I could handle and had to look for more civilized ways to spend my time. It was the Lenten Season of 2000 and I started to feel convicted by the Holy Spirit to tithe. So, I decided I better find a church I can belong to so I can fulfill the wishes of the Lord. At that time my mom was finishing RCIA. She and my dad decided to return to church and my dad wanted to return to the faith he grew up with. I had been to church with them several times (when ever I would visit for the weekend, they lived about 150 mile away from me), but I never really considered the Catholic Church in my search for a congregation to be a part of. I was certain I would join a Baptist church. In fact, there was a church really close to my house walking distance away that always seemed to be jamb packed, so I drove by one time to see which church it was – St. Joseph, Husband of Mary, Roman Catholic Church – I knew immediately I would never attend that church! Interestingly enough I ended up going every Tuesday evening for years and singing in their choir some time later. There were times when I was growing up I attended Catholic Mass. One of my good friends was a Catholic and whenever I spent the night at his house his mom would tell me to go to church with them. I never found it objectionable; I just thought I would be a Baptist, maybe even a preacher. I attended the closest Baptist church twice, one of the times was Easter Sunday, but both times the preacher was slamming the Roman Catholics. That really put me off and I decided not to return to his congregation. Even though I did not want to become a Catholic, I held them up as good Christian people. I made the rounds in Las Vegas but never found a church I was comfortable with. All the services I attended felt a little empty. I did not know exactly what I was looking for, but I knew I would know when I found it.
Several weeks had gone by and it was getting on towards the end of the Easter Season. It may have even been Pentecost Sunday. I do seem to remember red vestments, but of course, that may be my imagination filling in the details. I thought back to my first conscious experience with the Catholic Church, in the Sixth Grade. I went to the Children’s Mass with John Gendron (my good Catholic friend) and he told me how to receive Holy Communion on the way in. I said, “What?” and he answered, “Just do what I do.” Then Monday morning Emily (who was in our class) scolded me for receiving Holy Communion without being Catholic. I remembered visiting John after he moved away and going to church with him again while the bishop visited. He was just another preacher to me. I thought about attending Mass with my parents recently and talking to my dad about the Catholic Church. I knew he loved it. He used to tell us stories about when he was a kid, being an altar boy and playing Mass with his sister and telling people he would be the first American pope. I finally resigned and went to Our Lady of Las Vegas Roman Catholic Church. That was no empty service! The Spirit of the Lord filled the entire sanctuary and I was hooked! Walking out of the church towards my car I felt like I was walking two feet above the ground. On that very day I became a devout Roman Catholic. I went back to Our Lady of Las Vegas several times, but the parish I belong to (according to the boundary lines) was St. Francis de Sales. It was the middle of June before I found my parish. In the mean time I had spoken with my parents and they encouraged me to join RCIA, which I was eager to do.

New Blog Site

2008-04-04T08:45:00.003-08:00

I have begun to post blogs on another site - The Black Cordelias. It can be found here and in the blog roll to the right.

Solemnity of the Annunciation

2008-03-31T21:26:00.003-08:00

The angel of the Lord declared unto Mary…And she conceived of the Holy Spirit.
Behold the Handmaid of the Lord…Be it done unto me according to your word.
And the Word became flesh…And dwelt among us.
Pray for us, O Holy Mother of God…That we may be made worthy of the promise of Christ.
Pour forth, we beseech You, O Lord, Your grace into our hearts, that we to whom the Incarnation of Christ, Your Son, was made known by the message of an angel, may by His passion and cross be brought to the glory of His Resurrection, through the same Christ out Lord. Amen.

Normally I attend 5:30 PM Mass at the Mission San Diego. Because it ends at about 6:00 we always pray the Angelus after the final blessing, except during Easter then we pray the Regina Coeli. That was the last thing on my mind today as we received the final blessing from our priest. The only thing I thought about was how perfect it is to pray the Angelus on the Solemnity of the Annunciation and how the events of history are represented in the prayer.

While the focus of the Annunciation is on Christ, I can not resist expressing my love for His mother. My love affair with her had a rocky start coming out of a Protestant denomination in my mid-twenties. As a Protestant, I never gave the Mother of God a second thought; she was completely eclipsed by the Lord. As I slowly subjected my thinking to the teachings of the Roman Church my affection slowly grew and grew. The first leap out of Protestant thinking came from an argument I first heard from Scott Hahn. He pointed out that as a Christian we are called to imitate Christ. In our imitation of Christ we need to honor Mary as Jesus honored her as His mother. That was not hard to swallow either theologically or morally. Praying the Hail Mary was not hard to swallow either because it comes straight out of Holy Scripture. Then I began to pray the Rosary regularly. Getting to know the mysteries of the Rosary and meditating on them while praying the Rosary warmed me up to Mary even more. After discussions with my dad it was pointed out to me that everything Jesus has as a person came from Mary. All His DNA is Mary’s DNA. That would give her a special distinction among mankind. She is the only person that ever lived that shares the exact DNA of God Himself. My latest development in the way I view the Mother of God came as the result of reading Roy Schoeman’s book Salvation Is From the Jews. The last chapter of his book is a collection of conversion stories of Jews becoming Roman Catholics. It appeared that Mary was critical for a disproportionately large number of Jewish conversions to Christianity. It occurred to me (with the help of some discussions with my dad, again) that Mary would be very important to devout Jews because she is the personification of the perfect Jewish state (which may merit a post in itself)!

The gravity of the Incarnation goes much deeper than the I portrays (of course). God came down to Earth and became one of us! That gives dignity to every man, woman and child that ever lived no matter how degenerate, debased or repugnant they are or were. They now share the same form and likeness of All-Mighty God. God never wanted to be a snowy plover or a humpback whale or any kind of animal. Humans were the only creatures He willed to be His own. Now all of mankind, whether Christian or not, can say, “I am like the Most High.”

Finally I will leave with a poem by John Donne, who I was introduced to in college and immediately fell in love with.

Annunciation
Salvation to all that will is nigh,
That all, which always is all everywhere,
Which can not sin, and yet all sin must bear,
Which can not die, yet cannot choose but die,
Lo, faithful Virgin, yields himself to lie
In prison, in thy womb; and though he there
Can take no sin, nor thou give, yet he ‘will wear
Taken from thence, flesh, which death’s force may try.
Ere by the spheres time was created, thou
Wast in his mind, who is thy son, and brother,
Whom thou conceiv’st, conceived; yea thou art now
Thy maker’s maker, and thy father’s mother,
Thou’ hast light in dark; and shutt’st in little room,
Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb.

Kingdom of Heaven

2008-03-25T09:01:00.003-08:00

I love the movie Kingdom of Heaven. It combines my three favorite subjects in the whole world: the Church; the military and history. I was thinking about that movie and modern popular culture in America this past weekend. For all of my love of the movie, there are things about it that just drive me up the wall. My opinion is that if you are going to make a movie based on historical events then get the history right! The producers got so much of it right that it would be easy to overlook what they got wrong. The costumes were right, the major events were (for the most part) right, the weapons were right, the tactics were right and the characters were (mostly) right.

One thing I found particularly offensive was the portrayal of the monastic orders of knights. A major blunder was that none of the characters portrayed as Templar knights were actually Templar knights in real life. Teutonic knights were portrayed as little more than thugs and henchmen better suited to make an appearance in a mob movie. The Templar knights were delivered as riotous, undisciplined war mongers, and the Hospitalar knights were made to be seen as irreligious!? One of the main characters (a Hospitaller) made a statement, "I put no stock in religion..." That kind of a statement would never have been found on the lips of a man who took vows in a religious order of knighthood. Another error that I found offensive took place during a conversation between two men overlooking a bunch of Muslims praying on the beach. It was explained that Muslims were allowed their prayers as long as they payed the tax. That sounds suspiciously like the dihmmi required by Muslims for Christians and Jews (and Hindus in Muslim controlled areas of India) to pay in order to keep practicing their religion. I am not personally aware of any Christian ever exacting that type of a tax on another (we prefer that you convert!). Finally, one more scene I wish to point out for its errors occurred after the Battle of the Horns of Hattin (in which the Christian forces were completely destroyed). In the movie the king of Jerusalem and his chief lieutenant were taken prisoner. That really did happen in history, but what did not happen was Saladin offering a glass of water to the king who passed it to Reginald of Chatillon who subsequently had his throat slit for taking the cup which his king refused. What did happen (as was customary) was the prisoners were offered to convert to Islam and gain a place in Saladin's kingdom. All refused and Reginald immediately called for Saladin's conversion to Christianity at which point he was decapitated. The morning after the battle was over 230 militant knights chose to remain true to Christ and suffered the same fate (all who were given the option chose not to convert).

This may all sound trivial and the rantings of someone who is too obsessed with the details, but it's not! What we are witnessing is the attempt to defame the Church and elevate Islam to something that it is not (a religion on the same level as Christianity and Judaism). The movie was obviously researched extensively, otherwise how could they get it right that the siege of Jerusalem lasted three days, the defense was mounted by Balian of Ibelin and the safe passage of all Christians to Christian held land was the result of the siege after the threat of burning the Muslim holy places forced a parlay. How can you get all that right without knowing that the Templars were the most disciplined military force in the whole Middle East or that the Hospitallers prayed the Liturgy of the Hours and attended Mass every day? The point is that modern popular culture wants to defame the Roman Catholic Church as much as it can and one way to do that is make everything that was bad the fault of the Pope or his agents and everything that was good the credit of secular rulers. This is because the Church speaks out against sexual promiscuity, drug use, abortion, the death penalty, unabated greed, homosexuality, relativism and any number of other degenerate behaviors while lifting up Christ, heterosexual monogamy, family life, regular church attendance, chastity, the Sacramental life, civic and social justice, etc, etc.

Happy Easter! The Lord is Risen!

2008-03-23T21:19:00.006-08:00

The church I attend is just a couple blocks away from the stadium the San Diego Chargers play in and when I drove up today it was just like Sundays during football season. The streets were completely devoid of parking spaces. I had to park in a mall parking lot and walk about a quarter of a mile to church. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about it, I wish that happened more than just on Easter and Christmas. As I drove down the freeway to get there I was brimming with joy! Easter is my favorite holiday all year. There is always a tinge of pain though. I had a dream a couple years ago that I get a reminder of when I drive up and down Highway 125 through Spring Valley (east of San Diego). It reminds me of the dream because it looks similar to the landscape I had in the dream. In my dream I rounded the corner of a valley that a city was nestled in and a wall surrounded it like a medieval European city. Right at the center of the city were two cathedrals directly facing each other on opposite sides of the valley, one was Roman Catholic and the other was Eastern Orthodox. I took the dream to mean that God will reunite the two and they will strengthen each other. That might just be wishful thinking and the dream might not have been from God at all. Only time will tell.

My personal opinion is that the two churches need each other. I have frequently wondered how I could put into words the way I feel about the two churches. I finally came up with an analogy that works for me today. The Eastern Church is sensational and the Western Church is focused on the interior journey. I do not mean the East is superficial, melodramatic or unconcerned with the interior life. I mean the East has such a rich tradition with the incense, iconostasis, elaborate vestments, singing the Divine Liturgy, lots of candles and so on, while the Western Church is really bare bones. The Liturgy is relatively brief, the altar is frequently minimally decorated, sometimes there is not any singing at all. I do not point out the differences to make a statement that one is better than the other, one is just different than the other. It is like the difference between Christmas and Easter to me, one is more an inward expression and the other is more an outward expression of worship. It took me years of regular attendance of Mass to find what I have discovered in the Roman Liturgy (and years of praying the Hours). I find it quite a subtle journey and spirituality, but I sure like it a lot!

The Beauty of the Roman Mass

2008-03-13T23:39:00.004-08:00

The Roman Liturgy of the Mass is a beautiful thing. The depth of the mystery I experience grows on me continuously. It is a mystery for several reasons (and I am certain that I can not name them all). The first that always comes to mind is that as we celebrate the Mass we transcend time so we are present at the sacrifice Jesus made on Calvary. We also make a quick journey through the history of our salvation, beginning with the fall of mankind up to the Eucharist and the reception of God’s blessings with the command to evangelize the whole world. This is not something the Roman Catholic Church just made up one day. This is the way the first Christians worshiped their God, the liturgical format was something inherited by the Church from Israel because the first Christians were all Israelites. The classical interpretation of the Song of Songs is God’s approach to Israel and Israel’s response to the advances of their God. What a perfect metaphor! Beginning with the fall of man God has been approaching mankind as a lover attempts to seduce his object of desire. God seduces us. He approaches us and our response to His advance is prayer (as the Rabbi Ben Zion Bokser so eloquently put it). When I first converted to Roman Catholicism I had no understanding of the significance of the Liturgy. At first I looked forward to the homily, then I preferred the Liturgy of the Word to the homily, but now (as I feel I am more mature in my approach to worship) the part I love the most begins with the offertory and lasts until the reception of the Eucharist. The Liturgy continues to be a call and response, a sort of dialogue between our Creator and the congregation. God initially declares His love for us by proclaiming, through His regent, that He will manifest Himself to the congregation and the congregation answers with the affirmation of His holiness, “Blessed be God forever!” So at the conclusion, being filled with the Word, we are sent into the world to fulfill our Christian vocations.

One of the books I recently read was the Pope’s “The Spirit of the Liturgy.” One of the things that surprised me was his references to paganism. It shouldn’t have though. In the beginning of the book the Pope pointed out that the entire cosmos is subject to the Christ. Of course it is and those who observe the norms of the cosmos witness the testament of God. According to the Pope the first day of Creation was the 25th of March, which was also the day of Abraham’s sacrifice, which was also the day of the Annunciation and the day of the Resurrection! Wow! This is also why we used to always pray facing east: the New Heaven and New Earth have not yet come. The sun has not yet reached its zenith, he said. So we pray facing east, towards the Son. In all this is the marriage of three different aspects of Christian worship. The Jewish liturgical practices were married to the Christian liturgical practices in the presents of the Lord in the Eucharist through the norms of liturgical practice. That is why following the liturgical norms are so important and why it is a serious matter to deviate or add things expressly forbidden or ignore things expressly required.

Why Rome?

2008-01-23T07:11:00.000-09:00

As I grew up I never gave the phrase "in the fullness of time" much thought, but as my knowledge and understanding of history has grown so has my consideration of "the fullness of time." The first real revolutionary change was when I began to learn more about Alexandria, Egypt. I thought about the implication the city had on the time Jesus' birth. The major change was that I began to pay much more attention to the geopolitical situation and factoring it into God's plan for the world.

In the past year and a half I read a tremendous amount about Rome, just for general knowledge at first, but later for more specific reasons. I have always liked Rome for several reasons. As a kid my interest was just in fascination with Antiquity. As a teen I learned a little more about Rome and was fascinate with her military power. In my Twenties it became because of Christ that I was fascinated with Rome and that is what it remains with me today. All of Jesus' life on Earth was spent in the Roman Empire and that recently struck me as vitally important information. Less than sixty years after the annexation of Judea by the Roman state Jesus was born. About a decade after Rome became an Empire Jesus was born (maybe even less than that). It began to look to me like God had a purpose for the Roman Empire, and I maintain that is true - God wanted to become a man and live under the dominion of the Romans because they would best fit His purpose.

The first question that occurred to me was why didn't God manifest Himself under an independent Jewish state? Well, Judea was almost entirely independent under Roman rule at the time of the birth of Jesus. One example of the privilege they enjoyed was their taxes. Eight years after their annexation Judea was given the right to collect their own taxes. This was almost unheard of and was even the cause of complaint in other areas of the Empire. Then I thought Why Rome? What made the Roman Empire desirable over all others who ruled over Israel? What distinguished Rome from Assyria, Babylon, Greece and Egypt? It is easy for me, so in love with Rome, to come up with quick answers, but I do not think we would come to see the complete picture by doing that.

Putting Priorities In Order

2008-01-05T17:08:00.000-09:00

Every once in a while I get the feeling I am not doing enough in the service of The Man, so I take it as a sign and I begin to look for something else to start doing. I got that feeling one day walking out of Mass and as I skimmed over the bulletin I saw an advertisement that Nathan Adelson Hospice needed volunteers. So for the next two and a half years I did any number of things, which I found to be one of the most fulfilling things I ever did in my life. When I moved here to San Dog I signed up for the local hospice. We finally began volunteer training this past Thursday and had a full day today.

One of the main topics today was the spiritual care of the patient, the bereaved and the volunteer. Of course this is a subject always near and dear to my heart. One of the things we did to close the day was a guided exercise in which we wrote down twenty things we value under five different categories. Then we put ourselves in the position of a terminally ill cancer patient and had to let go of the things we valued, usually one at a time but on two occasions several at a time. The exercise is designed for us to take a look at our own mortality and values. That was not the first time I confronted my own mortality, but it did not turn out exactly as I expected it to. A big surprise to me was that I wanted to die in Anchorage, Alaska. I never had a particular place I wanted to die before. I was also surprised at how readily I was willing to let go of everything. My priorities were not exactly as I originally placed them - I had to shuffle three cards. My three top priorities in order of least valuable to most were originally: 3) taking comfort in solitude/silence/prayer; 2) the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church; 1) going to Heaven. When I was down to the last three and had to consider letting go of solitude/silence/prayer I decided to let go of the Church instead.

One other thing that surprised me was my lack of fear that God would tell me I did not do enough, which was a big fear before. As I imaged what would transpire after the event of my death all I felt was joy and anticipation. I also thought of four people, two of them were unborn siblings, one my own unborn child and one the first hospice patient I know for certain I made a significant difference for. That was a really rewarding experience.

The Lightbringers – The Emissaries of Jahbulon

2008-01-04T10:57:00.000-09:00

There is a video posted on the internet called “Lightbringers – The Emissaries of Jahbulon” which puts out fallacious information. It can be found here http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7447140689352016786. Whatever it says about Freemasonry is really of no consequence to me. My contention is its attempt to connect the Freemasons to the Templar Knights. There is no supporting evidence to lead to such a conclusion; in fact the verdict of history would show the opposite. There are three main claims by the producers of this video to connect the Freemasons to the Templar Knights. It claims several knights escaped arrest and fled to Scotland, continued to practice “secret rites,” then founded the order of Freemasonry in Scotland. Only one claim is true – several knights and sargeants did escape to Scotland because their nobles were strong supporters of the Order of the Templar Knights.

In regards to “secret rites” of the Templar knights, there were no such creatures. The reason this rumor arose is because the order was cloistered and laymen were not allowed to attend Mass at a Templar commanderie. Templar Knights were not just knights. First, they were monks. They took vows of celibacy, poverty and obedience, just like other monks, but they were also allowed to make temporary vows if they did not want to devote their entire lives to the order. They lived under a very strict monastic rule written originally by Bernard of Clairvaux, with a couple of additions later. One of the reasons laymen were not allowed to attend the liturgies observed by the Templar Knights was one of the rules they observed was no contact with women, this was to help them preserve their chastity. The “secret Templar services” were in actuality the Liturgy of the Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours, both of which were practiced daily. I can easily see how someone might confuse these things with occult practice because of a documentary video I have seen about Cistercian monks (interestingly enough Bernard of Clairvaux was a Cistercian). In one of the scenes the monks are all up on the altar, surrounding it in a circle. I am deeply and intimately familiar with several different forms of liturgical practice and my initial thought of that scene was, “Wow, that looks kind of creepy!” Something to note specially is the fact that many Templar chapels were built “in the round.” This would place all the celebrants of the liturgy in a circle around the altar and chanting in Latin. If someone who did not know Latin and was ignorant of liturgical practice saw what was going on they might think the Templar Knights had some cult or some form of demon worship going on that no one else was allowed to attend! Yea, I can see exactly where that’s going!

It was true that the Scottish nobles were friendly towards the Templar Knights. Many did escape to Scotland, as well as to Spain and Switzerland. These were mainly French knights and sergeants because in England, Spain and Germany the Templar Order did not fall under the persecution it did in France. There are several reasons for that. First and foremost the Order was wealthy, so wealthy it was able to bail kings out of bankruptcy, and did so on more than one occasion. King Louis was broke and needed lots of money because of the prosecution of a war. He also wanted to start another order of knights in which his own son would be grandmaster. He browbeat the Pope into suppressing the Templar Knights on trumped up charges, ceased their lands and treasuries and cleared the path for his brand new order all in one fell swoop. It would be important to point out that the Templar Order did not undergo the same maltreatment in any other country, nor were they ever convicted of the crimes alleged against them elsewhere. It was only in France, and under the direct intervention of the king, that convictions were drawn and punishments handed out. This all began on October 13th, 1307. The film claims that in 1420 the Templar Knights that escaped from France founded the order of Freemasonry in Scotland. What gives!? Were they immortal? Did they have extra long lives like Moses and Noah? Or is the claim simply untrue?

Religion

2007-12-24T17:36:00.000-09:00

What is the main influence in a person’s behavior? Psychologists and psychiatrists have disagreed about that question from the advent of their science. Is it their emotions, their physical desires and comforts, their baser instincts or their ability to reason that most influences their behavior? I propose it is their religion. Funk and Wagnall defines religion as the beliefs, attitudes, emotions, behavior, etc. constituting a person’s relationship with the powers and principles of the universe, esp. with a deity or deities. Even atheists and agnostics have a religion, no matter how much they try to deny it. Everyone has beliefs regarding the universe and few are more passionate about them than atheists! So we may say that atheists are among the most religious people in our midst. For more than a hundred years scientists have been denouncing Darwinian Evolution as a realistic explanation for life on Earth, yet we still teach it in our public schools as the only valid reason for our existence and absolutely fail to offer alternatives or even pretend there are alternatives to it. Let me return to religion before this turns into a tirade against Darwinism.

Religion is not only our attempt to approach God, but also one of the ways He approaches us. Of course this is plainly evident in such wonderful traditions as Judaism and Christianity where the evidence takes little to no effort to see how God longs for our companionship, or communion, if you prefer. What about paganism, ancestor worship or atheism, which can only be described as demonic in nature? There can be no mistake that participants in these brands of worship are attempting to discern the truth, to gain a union with the divine or the universe as they understand it, so the real question becomes does God try to approach pagans and atheists and others in these cults and misguided religions?

The Lost Son

2007-12-11T11:05:00.000-09:00

Roy H. Schoeman is one of my favorite authors. He is incredibly insightful. He wrote Salvation is From the Jews. I began to reread his book today and I was thinking over many things. The thrust of one of his arguments is built from the Letter of St. Paul to the Romans, Chapter 11. He points out that even though many of the Jews who lived during the time of Jesus rejected him as the Messiah, God still did not reject his people. This is something I have always agreed with but I have never been able to articulate it as well as Mr. Schoeman does. He points out that even though a stumbling block is placed in front of the Jews it is not so as to make them fall. They have been called into unbelief by God that the Gentiles might partake of their salvation, later they will be grafted back into the tree bringing yet more grace both to themselves and to the Gentiles. I really admire Mr. Schoeman because his argument for the fact is strictly scriptural and leaves practically no room for dispute, while mine has always been theological and leaves plenty of room for dispute.

Naturally this all made me rethink the general interpretation of the Prodigal Son. The interpretation I have always heard regards mankind as the younger son who squanders his inheritance early and wants to steal the food he is supposed to feed to the pigs. He remembers the goodness of his father, who represents God, and returns to his father’s house. Upon his arrival his father greets him and restores him to his place as an heir. This is a good interpretation, but I do not think it is entirely correct.

The faithful son is the Church of Christ. The father is Jesus Christ and the lost son who returns is the nation of Israel. St. Paul told us that Jesus is waiting to return for the full number of Gentiles to come into the Church. After that the nation of Israel will be jealous of the Gentiles and will return. The rejection of Jesus as the Messiah by the majority of Israel was represented by the son asking for his inheritance early. What has occurred since the Holocaust is wide spread apostasy and atheism among the Jews. This is represented by the lost son who finally lost everything. It seems to me that if Israel reflected on the favor the Church has found with God and the travesties the Israelites have endured since the foundation of the nation and especially in the past hundred years, they might get a little jealous. In the parable of the lost son this jealousy is disguised, but the astute observer will notice that the lost son is jealous. He realizes that even his father’s servants have more than he himself does and decides to return to his father and repent of his sins. It all makes perfect sense! Israel will repent of her sins and return to Jesus Christ! One thing to be personally on guard for is the reaction of the faithful son to his father’s joy upon learning of the lost son’s return home. The faithful son is angry and jealous! We can see that in the Church today. The majority of Christians do not like the Jews at all. This has been true for the entire life of the Church (much to our shame). The exact same reaction by the Church towards the Sons of Jacob sounds likely. The jealousy of the Church will stem from the mercy of the Father extending to all of Israel for all of time. St. Paul told us, in regards to Israel’s final salvation through Jesus Christ, “In respect to the gospel, they are enemies on your account; but in respect to election, they are beloved because of the patriarchs. For the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable.”

Karl Der Grosse

2007-12-08T13:02:00.000-09:00

I am reading a book right now called A Natural History of Latin by Tore Janson. One of the people it made me think about was Charlemagne. Of course the author spoke a lot about him, thus I thought about him. As the Romans expanded their empire and took over administration of the Mediterranean area Latin became the common language for the entire western empire. Business, government and schools were all conducted in Latin and an increasing amount of soldiers were being settled in conquered lands. Because of these things Latin edged out the local languages in the western part of the empire. When the Roman West dissolved into smaller independent states at the end of the Fifth Century every province except Britton spoke Latin. As the various German tribes took control from each other they spoke different languages but ruled over Latin speaking peoples and, just as in China we saw the Sinicism of conquerors, the Germans adopted the Roman language as their own. As time went on the language changed and adapted to local dialects, thus Spanish, Italian and French were born. We can even see evidence of the change before the fall of the west, we know that Latin began to become Italian in the spoken language even though written Latin held on to the classical rules in the early part of the Fifth Century. The public schools continued to be conducted in Classical Latin through their decline and collapse in the Seventh Century. The learning institutions did not disappear in the Church though, which continued to use Classical Latin.

After the rise of Islam and their conquest of North Africa the Bourbon Muslims crossed the Straights of Gibraltar and began the conquest of Europe. Thanks to the military might of Charles the Hammer they were defeated in France and retired to the Iberian Peninsula. The Spaniards faithfully began the Reconquest and further to the northeast a great leader was born, the grandson of Charles the Hammer – Charles the Great. After reunifying the old Roman West he rightfully looked to restoring the scholastic traditions of the Empire.

It is not hard to sympathize with the sentiment he felt. If you ask me or anybody I know we will all tell you that we speak English. If you ask people in Atlanta, New York, Boston, or Chicago they will all tell you the same thing, but if you take the street languages of those places and compare them to the street languages of Sidney, Dublin, Perth, London or New Zealand then you will definitely find differences even though everyone in those cities all speak English. In New Mexico, Arizona, Texas and Nevada the residents claim the heritage of the Wild West and in some of the more rural communities the spirit is still alive and in-your-face. The inhabitants of these communities are rightfully the heirs of such a tradition and feel a close connection to it despite the vast differences that exist in practice and culture. Charles the Great felt the same way about the Roman Empire and rightfully so.

After the evangelization of Ireland, Scotland and England the scholastic tradition of the Romans was richest in that area. A very large monastic community grew up in that part of the world and Church scholastics was alive and well. In fact, it was the intellectual center of Western Europe. Alcuin was a scholar from the city of York. He moved to mainland Europe and became associated with Charlemagne. He brought the intellectual heritage of the island with him and began to propagate it in Charlemagne’s empire. Finally, after centuries of disunity and degeneration, Europe was again unified. Roman law, the Roman Church and Roman scholastics were all to be unified under the new Holy Roman Emperor. What a glorious occasion! The return of the glory of the Eternal City and the ushering in of a new era! Who wouldn’t be excited and have hope and delight at the good things to come in the foreseeable future?

Language

2007-12-07T11:00:00.000-09:00

Language has always fascinated me. When I was ten years old my family moved to Germany and I was amazed that anybody spoke anything other than English. I didn’t understand how anybody could speak in a language other than the one I grew up with. Thus began my love of language. Of course it began as a rocky affair in grammar school, learning how to dissect sentences. What a bore! Later I found it similar to the way others have described logic, boring but important. Today I find intrinsic value in just about every aspect of linguistics. Literature was, for the most part, enjoyable until I got out of high school. While in Germany I learned to speak German quite well. I did attend American schools (Department of Defense Dependent’s Schools) but German was a required course until I reached the 7th Grade. That is not why I learned German though. We lived a half hour’s drive away from the military community so when I was at home I was completely surrounded by the German community, of course I had German friends and the local businesses were all conducted in German and we lived on a cul-de-sac in which everyone were friends (the adults I mean), so whenever we socialized with the neighbors it was in German.

Once I got into college I discovered I did well in English composition and the literature I found was so much more enjoyable than in high school. I even took English courses as electives! I was in love with it! Other than that I was required to take several psychology courses. Linguistics was one of the subjects we studied. Some of it seemed natural and common sense, but it stimulated thought that I was not normally in the habit of doing and my love of linguistics grew. One of the old German proverbs returned to me in that class. “If you want to think like a German you have to speak like a German.” Sentence structure, word case and gender suddenly became important to the way I think! These are things that affect my view of life and the order in which I perceive things.

Of course we all know that language changes over time. It develops and adapts to a changing world. Not very long ago in Germany there was a very different class structure than existed when I lived there. There used to be an aristocratic class and a lower class. There is an example of how quickly and subtly a language can change. Two words that both mean bad in German are “böse” and “schlect.” They didn’t always mean bad. In fact, they meant different things to different people depending on which class you belonged to! To the upper class böse meant “strong” or “powerful” which was good, while to the lower class it meant “oppressive” which was bad. In both upper and lower class schlect meant “popular” or “common.” On the lips of the upper class that was bad but on the lips of the lower class that was good.

So, how does that affect the price of tea in China? What good does that kind of knowledge do anyone, other than for someone like me who loves linguistics? And why is a subject like that brought into the religious arena? One reason is to address what has been called, by the pope, the American Heresy. That is the idea that I, as an individual, am capable of interpreting the scriptures for myself (unfortunately it has become quite large spread, even within the American Catholic Church!). Even though I lived in Germany for six years and spoke German fluently, I never knew that schlect meant common until I recently read a book on philosophy. Sixteen years after returning to America I have to learn from an American the original meaning of a German word! When I was sixteen years old I never discussed linguistics with my friends and I am sure they never discussed it with anyone either. I do not even know if my German friends knew the original meanings of schlect or böse. Two hundred years from now who knows how English will change and who will think to comment on the subtle changes that have taken place other than a linguist? Would it even enter the mind of a protestant preacher that this type of thing is important to pay attention to? Will they consult the teachings of Cotton Mather? With they even know who he was? Possibly not, they don’t have saints! Will they know who Lewis Speary Shaffer, D.L. Moody or J. Vernon McGee were? They would be Baptist saints, if the Baptists had saints! If today I said something was common but did not make the distinction that I meant it happened frequently rather than it was a poor experience, will it be interpreted as a poor experience in four hundred years? That is the danger with individual and unguided interpretation of Holy Scripture.

The whole point of it all is that we need to depend on the Magisterium to help us interpret the Holy Scripture. We need to listen to people like Pope Benedict who know and hold the truth about our faith. That is not to say that we are not thinking people and have no independence of thought. It means we should temper our thinking with the wisdom of the ages, with the wisdom of the Apostles as handed to us by those responsible for delivering and preserving their teachings. It means when we hold a view vastly different than the Church we should examine it thoroughly to find out why we hold a different view than the Church. That is no small or easy task and definitely not one that should be taken alone!

Constantine's Church

2007-10-07T09:12:00.000-08:00

To take a complete view of the European Church, we must begin to look at ancient Greece and Rome, the two major centers of European Christianity in the beginning of the Christian Era.

Up until the middle of the First Century B.C. spiritual and secular leadership was kept separate in the Roman Empire. Of course, there was a senate to lead the nation politically and a small group of priests called pontiffs who lead the nation in their spiritual life. At the head of the group of pontiffs was a supreme pontiff, called the Pontiffus Maximus. When Julius Ceasar took the reins of the Roman state and turned it into an empire he also assumed the title of Pontiffus Maximus and was the officiator of sacrifices in the Temple of Jupiter. After he died Ceasar Augustus became the Pontiffus Maximus, and the state religion never again separated from politics of the state. The story of the conversion of Constantine is well known and frequently looked at with skepticism, but I maintain it is true. Under the sign of the cross (and the blessings of the Lord), he defeated his rival in battle and became the sole emperor of Rome.

Constantine was also the Pontiffus Maximus. He was the head priest of all state religions, including Christianity. Up until this point the undisputed head of the Church was the bishop in Rome. Constantine legalized the practice of the Christian faith after converting to Christ, but he did not completely shake off all vestiges of Paganism. With over three hundred years of religious tradition telling Constantine he was the head of the Church, it was not an easy idea to get rid of and he refused to submit to the Roman Bishop. Constantine always considered himself the head of the Church, and equal to the Apostles.

During his reign, Constantine moved the capital of the Roman Empire to Byzantium, a small city on the banks of the Bosphorus, but he took this idea with him that he was the proper head of the Christian Church.

Toeing The Party Line

2007-08-28T21:51:00.000-08:00

One of the things I have been thinking a lot about lately is my journey from a cradle Baptist to a dyed-in-the-wool Roman Catholic. As the years go on and my knowledge of history, the Church and the Bible grows, so does my support of the Party Line. Something I find very interesting is that my beliefs never changed at all, but my faith has undergone a tremendous transformation. I can still remember the night I got baptized. I remember preparing for it in the upstairs room, where I put on white robes, then walked down to the pool at the appointed time, along with the others who were to be baptized. There was (what appeared to me) an old woman receiving baptism with me. I thought it was odd that she shared that experience with me because I thought everyone experienced it at my own age (five years old). The preacher asked me if I want baptism and I did and then he baptised me in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. When we got home (my parents, my siblings and myself) my brother and sister went up to bed and I had a conversation with my parents about the faith I was just baptised into. That evening I had a full and complete understanding of what Jesus did on the cross. Over the next few years I continued to learn about the Old Testament, and the Gospel. As a teenager I developed a deeper understanding of the Gospels, the New Testament and applying the Christian teachings to my life. In my early twenties I learned the value of abandoning the Christian way of life for gross hedonism.

When I was twenty-four I converted to Roman Catholicism and again began a devoted practice of my religion. I worked with a devoted Catholic who sponsored me in conformation and encouraged me to learn about the faith. Encouragement coupled with my father's love for history which I gratefully inherited, I started a long research project, which I plan to continue for the remainder of my life. The point of it all is that I have had a firm understanding of the Christian faith for as long as I can remember (literally) and as my knowledge grows, my understanding of that faith does not change, but my deeper conversion to Roman Catholicism only continues and I can only echo what our beloved pope recently stated: the Roman Catholic Church possess the fullness of the faith deposited by the Apostles and passed on to us by their successors.

Into Small Silence

2007-08-21T18:42:00.000-08:00

I just had a weekend that made me want to run off and join a monastery. Friday after work I went up to a Catholic retreat house and participated in a silent retreat under which the rule of silence was observed until Tuesday morning, just before lunch time. Of course, I thought of one of my favorite saints - Mother Teresa of Calcutta. One of her quotes were "The fruit of silence is prayer. The fruit of prayer is faith. The fruit of faith is love. The fruit of love is service, and the fruit of service is peace." This seems to be a continuing theme in my life. There is one stickler though. I know my ministry involves heavy interaction with the faithful.

One of the things I thought about this weekend was my deep love for Christmas. I love it slightly less than Easter (which is my very favorite holiday of all times). My love is different though. I have not been able to vocalize the difference, even though I thought about it quite extensively. This past weekend I was finally able to draw the distinction. The Easter joy is much different than the joy of Christmas. Easter joy is introverted and Christmas joy is extroverted. What I mean is that Easter stimulates the soul while Christmas stimulates the senses. My joy at the resurrection of our Lord is rather inexpressible, usually. While I am no less excited, expectant, or happy, it is usually less visible than Christmas. As we celebrate the birth of our Lord it is largely sensational. I say that with hesitance, because it makes it sound more superficial, but it's not. Memories of walking around Kris Kringle Market in Nürnberg, listening to Christmas music, seeing the fabulous decorations, smelling nutmeg and the taste of Lebkuchen are all permanently associated with Christmas for me. These are far from being the only associations, and much less the most important associations with Christmas for me, but I bring them up to help draw the distinction between the Easter and Christmas joy.

Blessed Be God Forever!

2007-08-15T23:13:00.000-08:00

Imagine the sound of this coming down from the alter on Sunday morning! "Blessed are You Allah, Lord of all creation. Through Your goodness we have this bread to offer, gift of the ground and work of human hands. It will become for us the Bread of Life." "Blessed be Allah forever!"

Recently a Dutch bishop in the Roman Catholic Church (Muskins) instructed the Faithful to call God Allah to improve relations between Muslims and Christians. An article on it can be found here. Bishop Muskins makes the erroneous assumption that Allah is the same entity as the All Mighty God of Judaism and Christianity. The evidence to the contrary is overwhelming and I will give just a few examples.

The Koran is the Islamic holy scripture, alleged to be dictated to Mohamed by the angel Gabril, who is supposed to be the same Gabriel who announced the coming of our Savior Jesus to Mary. Let's take a brief look at Heaven through the eyes of a Muslim as compared to a Christian as the first test of the validity of Bishop Muskins' claim that God and Allah are one and the same being (surely if they are the same then they will proclaim the same inheritance to observers of the Faith He deposited on Earth). Christians proclaim an afterlife basking in the presence of the Creator as heirs who share in the eternal inheritance of Christ, where there is no distinction between man and woman, Jew and Gentile, servant and free man. Muslims proclaim a river that flows with wine, the joys of the inheritance of seventy virgins, licence for unbounded gluttony. Okay, the questions of the afterlife must be taken on faith so if that is the only difference, it might be overlooked, but what about the commands of the Lord regarding prayer? Let me draw this distinction with a couple stories straight out of scripture. In the Christian Tradition, Jesus was speaking to His disciples and told them, "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Heavenly Father, for He makes His sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust..." In the Islamic Tradition, Mohamed prayed for a man who spoke out against his newly discovered religious tradition, and was subsequently ordered to stop doing such nonsensical behavior by an angel in the service of Allah, on the grounds that enemies of Islam are cut off and undeserving of the mercy of God. Strike two. Again in the Christian Tradition, Jesus said, "It was said to your ancestors, 'Do not take a false oath, but make good to the Lord all that you vow.' But I say to you, do not swear at all...let your 'Yes' mean 'Yes' and your 'No' mean 'No." Mohamed instructed Muslims that it is profitable to lie to nonbelievers and that Allah approves of such behavior because they have spurned the truth and are not worthy of honorable treatment.

This is far from being an exhaustive list of the differences between Islam and Christianity, but even this little bit is enough to prove that God and Allah are not one and the same. It is much more than simply calling the same entity different names. They are different entities all together. They differ in the view of the afterlife, the instructions on what to pray for and the instructions on personal conduct in the world. How many categories must the two religions differ in before we acknowledge that God and Allah are two different beings? The problem with affirming the fact of the matter is then we will be left with the question, "If Allah is not God, as the Muslim claim, then who is he?" It is a sad day when we favor popularity over truth.

Satan's Chess Match

2007-07-19T18:10:00.001-08:00

I am an avid Internet chess player. The site I play chess on allows players to sign on, make a move and then sign off and wait for the opposition to make a move, which could take anywhere from a few seconds to thirty days (even longer with a special dispensation from Stan). So on my way home from work I was evaluating a game I am currently involved in, in which my opponent allowed me to capture his queen without the loss of my own. I know what what happened in this game - my opponent simply made a costly oversight. I know this because we are not playing our first game against each other and I know he is a thoughtful player. When I evaluate a game I am in the middle of I try to objectively evaluate the strength of my position, the strength of my opponent's position, the strength of our pieces in play, what I have to do to quickly checkmate my opponent or what I have to do to avoid being checkmated.

In this evaluation I look at many, many things, on of which is my own ability to prosecute a prejudicial campaign against my opponent. This is critical in a chess match. I used to extend Christian mercy towards my opponents during a chess game. That is a path towards destruction, because let me assure you, no one else is doing such nonsense. In the many hundreds of chess games I have played I have only been extended that mercy one time (by someone other than my mother!). Eventually, as all things do, it lead me towards thinking about Christianity , the Church and the world. So it made me think about Satan's campaign against the Church, and that he is prosecuting it with extreme prejudice, and that there are seemingly neutral parties which Satan is able to utilize against the Church. He has even used Christian institutions against Christ! That is the importance of the Magisterium and submission to the authority of the Church.

Second Coming of Christ

2007-07-16T23:52:00.000-08:00

To all who read the Et In Terra Pax Hominibus; I am searching for a Catholic Order, Discipline, or Association devoted to the study of the Second Coming of Christ. My own search has resulted in the failure to find such a group.

I am not sure that one actually exists. The absence of such a group or groups would, in itself, be indicative of a “poor spirit” within the Church as we invoke the Second Coming at least five times during the Mass.

I have grown tired of talking to various “Protestants” about this subject because much of their theology, IMHO, is debased into “dispensationalism”. They also have a fondness for labeling the Catholic Church “The Whore of Babylon”.

The return of Christ is a major theme of much of the Apostolic writings of the New Testament and is mentioned in the Didache. We Catholics seem to have an abundance of groups that are dedicated to a particular spiritual subject. Perhaps you could recommend an Order, Discipline, or Association to me that has an interest in the Second Coming.

I thank you for your loving kindness.
Lowtec

Did He Beat Me To It?

2007-07-16T21:28:00.000-08:00

I recently read an article on World Net Daily about a physicist who claims to have proven the existence of God through the application of physics. He performed an experiment in which photons of light were released when sound waves were passed through water.

The only thing I read so far is his introduction, but I do plan on reading his outline and his eminent book. At the very least it sounds interesting and, if you are optimistic, it could be very exciting! Visit his website to read the claim.

Into Great Silence

2007-07-12T23:58:00.000-08:00

I have been greatly anticipating "Into Great Silence" coming to Alaska. Finally it did and played the past two evenings at a local theater. It is a documentary film about Roman Catholic monks who have the reputation of being the most ascetic brotherhood in the Western Tradition. Of course there was not an extensive amount of talking. In one of the reviews I read while waiting for the documentary's arrival I was amused that the producer spoke about developing a plot, but as I watched it I really saw a story develop, and I thought a lot about it all, and my own role in the grand scheme of things. Even the local cows observed the rule of silence. Those rebellious birds never quit running their mouths the entire time though, not even in the dead of winter! One of the things I found particularly funny were the multiple "documentary interviews" given by the monks. There were ten to fifteen of such interviews, and I finally saw the humor in them about half way through (okay, I never said I was swift). Another thing I got a kick out of was in the end credits - they showed no less than five (count 'em - one, two, three, four, five) sound editors! This is one I would definitely be able to watch again.

The Likeliness of God (Part 11)

2007-07-01T23:57:00.000-08:00

In the post entitled "Newton and Photosynthesis" I came to the conclusion that it is possible for God to exist and possible for evolution to exist. In the post "Orgins of Life On Earth" I excluded the possibility of aliens beginning life on Earth, not merely as something I felt was ridiculous, but because if it were true then where did the aliens come from? I made the assumption that Earth is as good a place as anywhere in the universe to begin all temporal life in the universe. In the interim I feel I presented sufficient evidence to exclude Darwinian Evolution as a viable means of explaining the development of life on Earth. Where does that leave us? It leaves us certainly with the possibility of a Creator of the universe who designed and controlled the development of life on Earth, and any number of other unmentioned possibilities for an explanation of our existence. Unfortunately I have no other explanations to offer, so we shall conclude that it is likely that our universe was created by an Unmoved Mover.

I presume an astute student of metaphysics would be able to offer a variety of options from a diversity of world religions. I am no such person. The only account I am well versed in is the Genesis account of the Judeo-Christian tradition. I have a sprinkling of knowledge of other religions, but am only familiar with very basic concepts. I know, for instance, that Eskimos believe in one Creator, and that Pagans believe in a multitude of petty gods, usually under the authority of one powerful god or a small group of powerful gods who share authority over all others who is/are the Creator/s, which ever the case may be. I have no idea what Buddhism, Shintoism or Taoism offer as an explanation. I imagine that Hinduism falls under the category of Polytheistic Paganism. It was widely believed for many centuries that the universe is eternal, that there was no beginning to it, but both religion and physics deny such a notion. This, however, is not meant to be a philosophical explanation to our existence, but a scientific one.

One of the problems with science is that it has historically been put at odds with religion, whether justified or not. In the next post I will attempt a reconciliation of the two.

The Fifth Cardinal Virtue

2007-06-25T23:26:00.000-08:00

An effort of the will and the grace of God are marking characteristics of cardinal virtues. Through their practice other virtues come to fruition, in fact all other virtues are dependant on the practice of the cardinal virtues. All virtues are an avenue towards God. How many times have you shown others more mercy than you would have before you ate that little piece of chocolate (the practice of brotherly love)? How many times have you turned to chocolate after a disappointing conversation (the practice of humility)? How many times have you enjoyed a piece of chocolate you had to share some with another (practice of liberality)? How many times have you turned around after realizing you forgot to buy a piece of chocolate (the practice of diligence)? How many examples must I cite? Chocolate is clearly the fifth cardinal virtue. The Spanish have known this for quite some time now. When the Jesuits were expelled in the Eighteenth Century they were allowed to bring their breviary, some clothes, chocolate and other necessities of travel.

Singing

2007-06-18T00:39:00.000-08:00

So I joined my parish choir about two and a half years ago and found much delight in singing, but growing up I liked to listen to bands that never really had members that sang without playing an instrument. The real value singing had to me was that it gave more meaning to instrumental music. One week ago I was singing in mass and realized that singing is an esteemable discipline in itself, and that singing should be pursued as such! It just occurred to me out of nowhere, and I never even questioned my attitude about it before. In fact, I was completely ignorant of my attitude towards it at all. The surprise was so large that singing carried such great esteem in itself that I was excited for my discovery, although a little embarrassed over the surprise.

The things I have frequently told others are things like, "When you sing you pray twice." "Music touches a part of the soul that speaking can not." I always encouraged other to sing as part of their prayer life and admitted that it is an important part of mine, and that I feel my own prayer life is enriched because it includes singing. I know the Spartans held the pursuit of singing on par with the pursuit of strength, speed and beauty, and on and on through history. I guess I am just surprised at my own previous attitude towards singing despite my intellectual knowledge of its value, and I am delighted in my new one.

Spain & Rome

2007-06-05T20:43:00.001-08:00

I started a book about Spanish history this week and it has been very interesting so far (and the author won't quit talking about Christianity, which makes me love it all the more!). Up until I began to read this book I have been an ignoramus regarding the history of Spain. The only things I knew were the same thing everybody learns in high school - the Islamic conquest of the peninsula and associated Christian reconquest, the Spanish Armada, discovery of America and Spanish exploration of the world, the Spanish American War and Spanish Civil War were just about the extents of my knowledge. I knew tid-bits because of the books I read about St. Teresa of Avila and the Spanish monastic orders of knighthood, but that did not amount to a great deal of knowledge.

One of the things this book talked about was a poem about King Roderick who reigned over the Visigothic kingdom at the time of the Islamic conquest (711 A.D.) It reminded me of the Song of Roland, which I read was the first epic poem to come out of Medieval Europe. This does not make much sense to me now, unless the Spanish poem is not considered epic. Anyway, both Roderick and Roland are betrayed by allied generals. While both fought bravely against the Moors neither were wounded in combat against a superior and prevailing enemy force, but both died as a direct result of the battles they fought - real hero stuff! Roderick was accused of seducing Jullian's daughter and Roland was accused of coveting Ganelon's wife. Roland was immediately avenged by Charlemagne, but Roderick's successors took their time avenging his defeat. It was no less dramatic though, we hear Peyalo shouting to the Muslims from a mountain cave, "Christ is our hope! From this mountain the defeat of the Goths will be avenged. I trust that the promise of the Lord will be fulfilled." It was a hope that persisted for centuries and was finally fulfilled at the completion of the Reconquista in 1492 (just in time for the evangilization of America!).

I wrote in this post that I am very interested in Christian history and have begun to accumulate books that I think would be important to read to gain a comprehensive view of it (of course the current book I'm reading is on the list). The last book I read was about the Roman Empire and it was quite revealing. It made me think about the relationship the Eastern Church has always had with the Western Church. It also made me think of the influence that pagan Rome exerted on Christianity. The Supreme Pontiff even takes this title from the pagan religious leaders called pontiffs, lead by the pontifex maximus. While Rome was the home of Saints Peter and Paul and one of the greatest centers of Christianity ever since the birth of the Church the city never gave up much of its pagan identity even long after Saint Constantine issued the Edict of Milan. Despite a long tradition of Christian heritage and being a major center of authority, the city of Rome did not shake off the remnants of Roman Paganism until the sack of Rome by the Vandals in 455, who were allowed peaceable entry to the city and free reign of her valuables for fourteen days in exchange for safety from murder, rape and fire. Even the golden tiles were taken from the roof of Jupiter's temple.

When Julius Caesar took political control of Rome he also took religious control, taking the title of pontifex maximus for himself and setting a precedent for the emperor to lead the empire in both politics and religion. When St. Constantine arose it was a tradition of the Romans for over three hundred years for the emperor to lead the state in all regards. It was natural for him to exert control over the bishops of the Church. It was natural for both the bishops and the emperors to exercise this type of authority and we see it taking place throughout all of early Church history. The establishment of the Roman Empire was absolutely necessary for the spread of Christianity and was a key element in the timing of the birth of God even though the pagan culture exerted so much influence on the Church. That was also the reason Constantine had to move the state capital out of Rome. He moved to allow the Church to grow in a Hellenistic culture free of the pagan influence of the Eternal City. I am sure I will find much more to say later. Church history has many more centuries to grow before reaching present days.

Communion of the Saints

2007-06-02T20:47:00.000-08:00

One of the things the Roman Catholic Church teaches is that Jesus Christ is truly present in the sacrifice of the Holy Eucharist. I firmly believe this and am fascinated with it. Some have raised objection to this and even quoted scripture to deny it! One of the argument raised in opposition is that Christ died once for all and that He does not make Himself a sacrifice again and again. The Roman Catholic Church teaches that in the Eucharist all participating parties transcend time and all are present on Calvary during the time of the crucifixion of the Lord. This is one of the ways in which we experience the communion of the saints. This seems like it could be a foreshadowing of the things to come in Heaven. I wish I could discuss this at length, but I just do not know enough about it. If anyone else knows, please speak up.

Christ and Evolution

2007-06-02T19:40:00.001-08:00

Last night I went to a bar-b-que with my parish's young adult group. A couple of the young men there were discussing the fact that they were going to teach the 9th graders' catechism classes and when the subject of sex ed came up I naturally asked if they were going to teach JP II's Theology of the Body. The subject drew precious little conversation but it stimulated my mind towards what I read of that great work. So I was in a looooong line to buy coffee today and thinking about all sorts of things and thought about what JP II discussed in the opening of the Theology of the Body, namely that we are created in the image and likeness of God. It occurred to me that this is the most powerful argument we have against evolution.

In the Beginning, Adam was created whole, entire and perfectly, in the image of God. Because we are created as the sole creatures on Earth God has willed for His own sake we have our dignity and humanity from the foundation of time. Both Adam and Jesus Christ were perfect human beings. If we truly did come into existence through the evolution of apes, then Adam is a myth and our religion is false. If evolution will eventually change us into something else, then will God come again to die for the atonement of that species? If not then are we not the most glorious and exulted of all Creation? Surely we are because God took on human flesh and became one of us. As a species we are holy unto the Lord, both before His coming because we are looking forward to His coming and after His coming because He humbled Himself to share in our humanity. Looking at evolution and trying to reconcile the life and work of Jesus in and for humanity just does not work. Because God came down from Heaven as a human being, evolution could not be a valid explanation of human life on Earth.

Spiritual Gifts

2007-05-28T21:38:00.000-08:00

Denigration of the Roman Catholic Church is demonic in nature and origin. This is not to say justified criticism is demonic, but how much mud slinging is really loving criticism? I know the Roman Catholic Church is not perfect but it is the church of God and practitioners of her faith are true Christians. This can be definitively determined based on Holy Scripture. What is the true test of a Christian? "You will know they are Christians by their love for one another." This is the benchmark by which we measure our communion.

"If I speak in human and angelic tongues, but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophesy, and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all faith to move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away everything I own, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interest, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrong doing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, hopes all things, endures all things." So this becomes the manner in which we should conduct ourselves and the measure by which we treat our Christian brothers and sisters. But it is not new news, it is from the foundation of our faith.

We are given gifts by the Holy Spirit such as apostleship, prophesy, evangelizing, teaching, discernment of spirits, compassion, and others. The demonic exert power in the world in the same manner. They give gifts of boldness, rage, ambition, fierce will power, pride, the power of persuasion and similar qualities. People are able to use these gifts to advance the agenda of the demonic. It can be subtle and we need to be aware of this type of demonic attack. Just because we are Christian does not mean we are immune from the attacks of the Evil One, it means the opposite. We are the better than the Delta Force, the Navy SEALS, Force Recon and Pararescue all put together. We are the Soldiers of the Most High God so we become the primary objects of demonic attack and we need to quit committing fratricide. Just being on watch for this type of behavior is enough to fight it pretty effectively. Let me also say that denigration of other churches by the Roman Catholics are also fratricide and this is exactly the type of behavior that the demonic powers encourage and work towards. We are called to be a unified church - one in Christ Jesus. I will finally believe that this is what our church leadership is working for when I see the call for a universal church council and not ever before.

Origins of Life on Earth (Part 10)

2007-05-28T20:16:00.001-08:00

Although I am far from done discussing evolution, I will move on in my attempt to prove the existence of a divine Creator of the universe. One of the theories of the origins of life on Earth is that aliens dropped off living creatures then left. But where did those aliens come from, if that is in fact true? The best guess for the origin of the universe as of yet is the Big Bang theory. I have no objection to such a theory and current physical science points in this direction. No living being could have come out of the initial explosion though. This means there must have been a point in time when the universe was completely uninhabited by any temporal life what so ever. There must have been some point then when non living matter changed into living matter. This is a defining and singular point in time, meaning at one instant there was no life and at the next moment there was. When was that time and what happened?

It is fair to assume that Earth is a perfect model of the universe in this regard and that we are the most advanced living being in the universe, so we can ignore any such theory about alien origins of life on Earth. This is not to just flippantly disregarding any such theory, only saying that if it is true that we have our origins in some other part of the universe, something had to happen in that other place similar to what we are supposing what happened on Earth. Life had to start somewhere and we might as well use Earth as the cradle of life in the universe.

One theory about evolution is that change happens radically and in short order. This speaks more of creation than evolution because DNA will not support a theory about squirrels rapidly changing into raccoons. DNA only supports theories about squirrels changing into different kinds of squirrels. One of the silliest things I ever heard is that one day we were monkeys and a few millions years later we were men. First of all monkeys are perfectly suited for what ever environment they will be in. People need clothes to survive but animals do not. What change could ever happen to make animals not need fur only to need it again later?

From Amino Acids to Living Cells (Part 9)

2007-05-26T14:11:00.002-08:00

For something to be alive it must be able to reproduce itself, have the capacity for growth and function. When I think about viroids and prions becoming viruses then single celled organisms it seems like a logical progression to me, but it is not. The reason it seems logical is because it goes from simple to complex. It is order arising out of chaos in a systematic fashion with definite steps. It is not possible though because viruses, viroids and prions are not capable of reproducing themselves, they are parasites which require a host organism for the production of future generations. They are able to die though. So what happens to a population group that has no way to reproduce but does have a way to die?

So life, in it's simplest and earliest stages, needed RNA or DNA, proteins, a cell membrane (probably rigid), and a means for metabolism. How do we go from amino acids to that? It is easy to see how amino acids would naturally join together with chemical bonds then fold up by chance and develop three dimensional shapes, but in humans there is a special protein that gives proteins their conformation and ensures they take the shape that they are supposed to. They do not take shape without the intervention of this protein. How did that protein ever come about? It is like a factory. Can you imagine a factory accidentally appearing in the desert somewhere? Again, I do not have that much faith. The more biology reveals to us, the less likely evolution becomes.

Proteins in Brief (Part 8)

2007-05-24T20:36:00.002-08:00

There are two types of bonds atoms share. An ionic bond is fairly weak and formed between two atoms that have opposite charges. A covalent bond is strong. It occurs because each atom becomes unstable without a full compliment of electrons. Certain atoms are predisposed to share electrons with each other so the electron begins to orbit each atom in turn. These two atoms become strongly attached because now that both atoms have a full compliment of electrons they become stable and unwilling to part company and return to a state of instability.

When a cell needs a particular protein it sends a chemical message to the nucleus which unravels the appropriate stretch of DNA and manufactures the needed protein in the quantity required. A protein is not just any kind of molecule. The distinguishing mark of a protein is the presence of at least one peptide bond. A peptide bond between a group on an amino acid (containing a carbon atom, a hydrogen atom and two oxygen atoms) forms as a covalent bond to a group on another amino acid (containing a nitrogen atom and two hydrogen atoms). RNA strings a line of amino acids together in the order prescribed by the DNA. As the amino acid band comes to completion it begins to fold up on itself giving it a three dimensional shape called its conformation. It is through their conformation that proteins gain their function. Because of their shape they gain the ability to attach to other molecules and change them. The number of proteins needed for human life is not known, but it is in the tens of thousands! Each one of these proteins would have had to develop by chance, by mutation, without any order or direction if we were to hold strictly to evolution as an explanation of life on Earth.

Beginnings of Life? (Part 7)

2007-05-24T00:03:00.002-08:00

Again we will just lay down some ground rules and define a few terms before really digging into the problems that exist in movement along the evolutionary railroad. There are three non-living agents that are players in this game we are playing. Everyone knows what a virus is - nucleic acid surrounded by a protein coat. Viroids are closely related to viruses, they are RNA strands without a protective protein coat. Prions are the opposite of viroids - proteins without any associated nucleic acid. Organelles are proteins within cells that have specific functions just as organs do in a complex organism. The nucleus is the organelle which contains the "blueprint" for life: nucleic acid. The simplest life forms are prokaryotic cells. The distinguishing mark of prokaryotes is the absence of membrane bound organelles, including the nucleus. Eukaryotic cells have a membrane surrounding the nucleus.

An analysis of the way these all interact and behave will also disprove evolution as a viable means to continue exploring science. It should be safe to say that if evolution where true, a logical progression for it to take place is going from unassociated sugars to ribonucleic acid to deoxyribonucleic acid, simultaneous with amino acids finding association with each other to become proteins. At some time along the evolutionary railroad the proteins married the DNA and viruses were born. This was the beginning of single-celled life and as the proteins grew and evolved, naturally the RNA or DNA strands within the protein grew in size, function and importance, eventually becoming prokaryotic then eukaryotic cells and eventually evolving into multi cellular organisms.

The Oxygen Super Highway II (Part 6)

2007-05-19T23:38:00.003-08:00

After doing some reading I knew just about as much as I did before I began my brief investigation - not much about amphibian respiration. As in mammals and fish, amphibians require a moist surface for the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide. Some have lungs and some do not, but all of them have capillaries close to the surface of their skin which has special epithelial cells which function the same as the epithelial cells in the mammalian lung. One new thing I learned is that some frogs obtain up to 80% of their oxygen through their skin. It does leave us in the same place we left off in The Oxygen Super Highway I, though - still no possibility of evolution leading fish out of the sea. Gills would never develop into an amphibian form of respiration because the components are too different. How would internal organs ever lead to external organs through the process of natural selection? It becomes yet another example of evolution in reverse. How would it work the other way? Could external epithelial cells ever develop into gills? While I see tremendous benefit to having internal organs I simply can not imaging some sort of mutation that would lead to it! Let us take a look at some of the fruits of DNA mutations in humans - Down Syndrome, muscular dystrophy, chronic myelogenous leukemia and any number of others that lead to miscarriages.

The Oxygen Super Highway (Part 5)

2007-05-18T15:56:00.002-08:00

There are myriads of arguments that successfully disprove evolution. There are just too many holes in the theory and it does not stand up under intense examination. It does not stand up under any examination. One of the basic assertions is that life originated in the water and proceeded onto land via a walking fish that mutated to walk and harvest oxygen from air instead of water. Just bringing up a theory like that draws suspicion.

Under normal atmospheric condition the air is made up of roughly 21% oxygen by volume and 0.03% carbon dioxide by volume. When the diaphragm contracts it moves down and draws air into the lungs by creating a vacuum within the body cavity. Air with this rich partial pressure of oxygen enters the lungs and fills tiny air sacs in the lungs called aveoli. Capillaries surround these aveoli and the thin walls of both allow the free exchange of gases. Now the blood flowing into the lungs is poor in oxygen and rich in carbon dioxide with percentage by volume of 5.3% and 5.9% respectively. With such vast differences in the partial pressure of gasses present diffusion rapidly occurs to equalize the partial pressures of gasses in the lungs and capillaries, so as the blood flows out of the lungs it has suddenly become 13.7% oxygen and 5.3% carbon dioxide by volume. So this is what is occurring - oxygen rich air flows into the lungs and comes into contact with oxygen poor blood. Due to the differences in pressure the oxygen flows into the blood and the carbon dioxide flows out of the blood which is rich in the blood and poor in the atmosphere. Oxygen rich blood is pumped out of the lungs, through the heart and out to the body tissues where it again flows through thin walled capillaries. The amount of oxygen and carbon dioxide in body tissues is 5.3% and 5.9% by volume respectively. Now diffusion occurs again and gas flows freely to equalize the differing partial pressures of gasses. The blood is returned to the 5.3% oxygen and 5.9% carbon dioxide by volume and pumped back to the lungs via the heart.

Now let us look at what happens in the gills of a fish. Water is much harder to harvest oxygen from because salt water only contains 0.4% to 0.8% oxygen by volume. Wow, what a difference from 21% by volume in the atmosphere! Water flows across fine filaments called lamellae where capillaries carry blood flowing in the opposite direction. The direction of flow is important to optimize diffusion in such an oxygen starved environment. Unfortunately I can not dazzle you with fancy numbers as with the human respiratory system, but the principle of blood flow coupled with diffusion remains the same. Newly oxygenated blood flows from the gills to body tissues that have a lower partial pressure of oxygen and a greater partial pressure of carbon dioxide and diffusion again redistributes the gasses.

One of the vital factors of a respiratory system utilizing gills is being immersed in water. Have you ever looked inside a washing machine full of clothes and water? All the clothes are suspended and separated from each other and the ventilation facilitates the removal of dirt from the clothes. When the wash cycle is finished the spun clothes hardly fill the drum, instead they are all pressed up against the sides. Gills can be likened to clothes in a washing machine. When they are fully ventilated, the water suspends and separates the gills allowing oxygen to diffuse across the membranes and oxygenate the blood in the capillaries, but when the fish is out of the water the gills look much like the clothes that have been spun - they hardly fill the cavity, instead they are all pressed together, up against the sides. That does not make for good oxygen exchange, in fact it does not make for any oxygen exchange. How about a human lung, or any mammalian lung for that matter? Water is some what detrimental to its function. Mammals are simply incapable of harvesting oxygen from fluid. Because of the nature of the oxygen demand and the content of oxygen in water, mammals will never be able to draw enough oxygen from water by the same means as from the air. Diffusion would happen in reverse of what it is supposed to!

How does a creature crawl out of the water that is dependant on water for its very life? Granted, there are such things as amphibians which take oxygen from water and from the atmosphere but we will take a closer look at that possibility after we have developed how amphibians do that. My contention is simply that no fish ever crawled out of the water and started living on land. There is a wall of separation between water and air! The mechanisms for oxygen exchange are just too different. On one hand water flows over an appendage type device and on the other hand gasses fill a sac. Could gasses ever flow over gills and oxygenate them? Then could those appendage type devices ever start to fold up into sacs? I find that very hard to believe. It is not something I am capable of taking on faith alone. Even if it did happen, it would have to be guided by something other than chance! A series of random mutations simply can not change gills into lungs. The very thing that would help a fish to survive in the atmosphere would kill it in the water and the thing that allows it to survive in the water kills it in the atmosphere. Because gills need to remain moist to function one of the developments required to allow it to begin to be used as a lung is a mucous membrane. What would the mutation have to be to create one of those out of the blue? It would never happen! Mucous glands are too complex to just appear out of no where and for no reason and DNA mutations are too simple. How can changing a few amino acids develop into brand new organs? Just bringing up a theory like that draws suspicion.

Superficial Exam of Evolution (Part 4)

2007-05-17T21:27:00.002-08:00

Just on the surface of things evolution is doubtful. Even the most superficial examination will show that it is an erroneous theory. Take for example hearing loss in the aging. Men are statistically more likely to suffer hearing loss than women. The onset of hearing loss in the aging begins at the high frequency ranges and as the loss of hearing progresses the frequency of sound waves lost lowers. Women speak at these higher frequency ranges, so men simply do not pick up the sound of their voices very easily. This is plain evidence of intelligent design!

On a more serious note, but none the less superficial, let us look at the extreme differences in climates that humans live in and question evolution on the basis of adaptive evolution. According to science we have been hanging around the planet for about 200,000 years. Eskimos live in an environment so cold, so harsh that only grass and bushes grow there. No trees or vines or any plants of that nature survive, but humans have been able to thrive, along with a myriad of other animals such as birds, bears, fox, elk, caribou and many others. It gets cold (-80 degrees Fahrenheit!). Other men live in climates that are equally hostile in the opposite extreme. Deserts get up to 135 or 140 degrees. There are swamps and jungles where it is so humid and teaming with every kind of life form, and high altitude environments that make it hard for someone who is not used to it to breathe. This is not even an exhaustive list of the different climates and environments men have lived and thrived in for many thousands of years, but the differences between the environments are tremendous. The theory of adaptive evolution asserts that as a population group arrives in a new environment the individuals that are best able to adapt through chance and gene mutation will survive and reproduce. 200,000 years is more than enough time to develop at least a little difference between men from the arctic and men from the swamp, but there is none. They are anatomically exact replicas of each other.

Other animals show slight differences though. Take bears for example. The hair of polar bears are specialized for their environment. The follicles are hollow tubes in which air is able to enter. The bear's body heat warms the air and helps keep the animal warm. Why don't Eskimos have hollow hair follicles? That would be a perfect adaptive mechanism to develop to suit the environment. Eskimos don't even have more hair than other people, in fact they have hair cover much less of their body that most Italians do, and Italians do not need that extra hair all over their bodies. The Mediterranean is a warm climate, so Italians would need less hair. It appears that evolution is working in reverse in these particular circumstances. How about peoples in high elevations? If adaptive evolution were true is it not reasonable that they would develop special lungs or special cells in their lungs to adapt to their environment? Alas, no such development has occurred, they are anatomically the same as those who live by the ocean. Traditionally the people who live close to the sea take much of their food from the sea, but they have not developed any special lung capacity or unique cells that allow them to harvest oxygen from water like the fish do. Why is that?

Questions like these make me question the validity of the theory of evolution. If men have been around for 200,000 years then why are we the exact same as we were even 2500 years ago? There should have been at least some new changes, but there has not. We know we are exactly the same because of the ancient Greeks and Egyptians. They knew human anatomy. They knew the same anatomy we know today. This view is very superficial, but it begs the question - is evolution a truly valid theory or does the scientific evidence make a judgement against it?

Evolution In Brief (Part 3)

2007-05-16T12:51:00.003-08:00

Evolution is a pretty simple concept. There are two main categories of change in genetics, they are macroevolution and microevolution. The two are quite different and when evolution is addressed it is usually macroevolution being discussed. Macroevolution is the change species take over a long period of time (millions of years) to develop into new taxonomic groups. Microevolution are changes that occur within a gene pool from one generation to the next.

One of the driving factors of microevolution is natural selection which effects a change in the gene pool due to the survivability of the fittest individuals. If a particular bear is better able to hunt due to its genetic superiority to the other bears in the immediate area it is more likely to survive and reproduce, by so changing the gene pool and populating subsequent generations with its own genes. Genetic drift are changes in the gene pool due to chance. Gene flow affects microevolution by the movement of individuals who are more likely to reproduce. As America was being shaped many different peoples populated her lands. Many people were introduced to each other who would not otherwise have been able to meet and as a result the gene pool changed. Gene flow reduced the differences between the different ethnic groups by blending them together. Bottlenecking, the founder effect and gene mutation cause microevolution, but not nearly to the degree that natural selection, genetic drift and gene flow do. When it is said that evolution is observable in the span of a life time, this is what is being discussed, and it is far different than macroevolution.

Speciation is the development of new species through the process of evolution. Gene flow stops during speciation and two formerly similar populations drift apart. After a period of time they have drifted so far apart they are no longer able to interbreed and two distinct species are developed. There are two classes of speciation. Allopatric speciation occurs when two populations are separated by physical barriers such as mountains, rivers, canyons or oceans. Sympatric speciation takes place when two population groups share a habitat but do not mate as a result of biological factors such as changes in the chromosomes and mating habits that are mutually exclusive. After millions of years of speciation occurs there are so many different genetic variations that life as we know it today develops.

The main factor in adaptive evolution is natural selection. As a population group is introduced to a new environment where new challenges threaten the survival of the population then the individuals who possess genes that are most suitable for survival in the new environment coupled with continued change from generation to generation eventually lead to new and more suitable individuals living in any one particular environment. As the population carries on for generation after generation a new species appears which has fully adapted to the new environment.

Energetic Procession

2007-05-13T19:36:00.000-08:00

For the sake of fluidity in the attemp to formulate a scientific proof for the existence of God I moved our comments out of the Evolution post. The main purpose for that was that we were not even close to talking about evolution and there was probably no way we were ever going there in this conversation.

The Virtues

2007-05-12T18:33:00.000-08:00

There are four cardinal virtues: fortitude, justice, prudence and temperance. These are called cardinal because all other virtues depend on the practice of these. The cardinal virtues can be achieved through the combination of effort and grace. Temperance makes an appearance on another list of virtues called capital virtues which include brotherly love, chastity, diligence, humility, liberality, meekness and temperance. The capital virtues are so called because in practicing them all other virtues have their being.

When ever someone used to speak to me about temperance, only one thought came to mind, that of those crazy women in the Twenties trying to get everyone to quit drinking. Now everything I am about to discuss has nothing to do with the Temperance Movement or the people in it, it only has to do with what is inside my tiny mind. So temperance took on a meaning to me of only one thing, namely moderation. So that is the mindset you get when you have an immature spirit feeding on meat which is only yet ready for milk. What does moderation profit a soul? Is moderation so virtuous that it is to be said that all other virtues flow though the practice of moderation? Can it really be said that prudence, humility and chastity truly hinge on the practice of moderation? Certainly overindulgence is a bad thing for the soul when it is taken to excess, but that is not the opposite of moderation, that is addiction, which the practice of moderation will never conquer.

In the "temperance is moderation" model one minor detail is left out. That is that the virtues are not an end in themselves. They are a means to an end. They are the vehicle towards a deeper relationship with the Divine, without whom all is empty and all is meaningless. What can I say? The devil's in the details! Truly, if temperance is reduced to moderation then God has been removed from the virtue. What temperance actually means is to find God in all the pleasures of the world, to always be aware of the Lord Jesus in His gifts to us. Now that includes mastering the pleasures of the flesh because if we do not control them, then they will certainly control us. I am afraid that is the nature of the Beast, but to reduce temperance to mere moderation is to quit practicing the virtue.

Newton and Photosynthesis (Part 2)

2007-05-06T17:52:00.000-08:00

Sir Isaac Newton developed three laws of motion. The first states that "objects at rest tend to stay at rest until acted upon by another force and objects in motion tend to stay in motion until acted upon by another force." The second law is not an issue I care to address at the time (and maybe never in this series), and the third states, "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." Now my question is: can these laws be applied to the principle of entropy? Normally these laws are applied to specific objects like a locomotive, an asteroid, or airplane. I make the argument that these laws can be applied to the principle of entropy because the state of the universe is moving from order to disorder. The universe is in motion and will tend to stay in motion until acted upon by another force.

Have you ever walked from a toasty-warm sidewalk on a hot summer day onto the cool grass? Has the dramatic difference in temperature ever stood out to you? Have you ever wondered why the temperature changed so much? Let me tell you why it is so much cooler on the grass than on the sidewalk. When the sun's rays hit a solid object that is energy, in the form of light waves, transferring to the solid object and effecting a change in the volume of energy stored in the atoms of the object. The energy is absorbed into the electrons whirling around the nucleus of the atom and it moves from one "shell" to the next higher "shell." With the electron in this excited state it becomes very unstable and, like water, seeks the lowest level. The atom "throws" this extra energy off in the form of heat and the electron is able to return to the energy shell in which it truly belongs. This is what is happening to the dirt, concrete or asphalt sidewalk that is so much warmer than the adjacent grassy area.

On the grass, when the sun light hits the chlorophyll molecules, instead of returning to the lower energy shell the atom throws off the electron which cascades down a transport chain. A new electron is taken from water and oxygen is a waste product given off by the grass. This electron that was thrown off the chlorophyll indirectly causes the production of ATP, which is the basic form of cellular energy as well as causes the reduction of NADP to NADPH (another form of cellular energy) which moves to a cycle called the Calvin-Benson Cycle. The ultimate product of the cycle is the production of glucose. This is the process of photosynthesis. Now this process has been amazingly simplified, but the basics are there.

Now we must revisit one of our initial assumptions: natural laws are constants everywhere in the universe. If entropy is the natural movement of the universe from order to disorder, and the normal result of entropy is the production of heat then something is amiss. In photosynthesis heat is not thrown off by the grass next to the hot sidewalk, instead sugar is produced by the series of several chemical and biological reactions. This is the opposite of entropy. This is movement from disorder to order! In accordance with Newton's First Law of Motion there must be an external force acting on the movement of entropy for this to occur. Evolution may be the force acting contrary to entropy, but God might also be the force acting contrary to entropy.

Beginning with all initial assumptions and analysing photosynthesis in the light of entropy and Newton's Laws of Motion the deduction can be drawn that it is possible for evolution to exist and it is possible for God to exist.

Will Science Lead Us to God? (Part 1)

2007-05-05T17:10:00.000-08:00

In all previous posts there has been an assumption of the existence of God. For this series I will not make that assumption, but will assume there either is or there is not the existence of a God, or Creator and Originator of the universe. There are many other assumptions we can and will make also. We can assume that natural laws are constants everywhere in the universe, that the universe is logical, that there are universal truths and we can know what they are, that the totality of human experience is admissible to this discussion but is valid only if it can be scientifically analysed or logically deduced. We will not assume this list is complete and may be altered upon a closer examination (any edits will be pointed out as such).

When I was a junior or senior in high school my mom told me to read the New Testament if I wanted to win the Nobel Prize for science. That statement was precipitated by a conversation about a Unified Field theory, which for some reason was in the news. In science, things that are really, really big do not always jive with things that are really, really small, so there is this idea that someone will someday develop a Unified Field Theory that will tie it all together and we will finally live in one big happy unified universe in which all things big and small will be explained. Well, this is not a Unified Field Theory, it is an attempt to prove the existence of God through the application and analyzation of science. First of all I want to acknowledge that this is very ambitious and it may not succeed, so again I want to solicit any help I can get. I am also open to criticism and would enjoy challenges and corrections when I am wrong.

Entropy is characterized by the movement of an ordered state to a disordered state and is the natural behavior of the universe. The conservation of energy asserts that energy can be neither created nor destroyed, but only transformed. It is spelled out in the First Law of Thermodynamics, which is, "The change in the internal energy of a closed thermodynamic system is equal to the sum of the amount of heat energy supplied to the system and the work done on the system." This law is accompanied by a Second, "The total entropy of any isolated thermodynamic system tends to increase over time, approaching a maximum value." I know that is a lot of information to digest in a short amount of space, and my only aim in this post is to lay out some of the foundation and begin the discussion, so I will stop with that.

The Universal Language

2007-05-01T21:08:00.000-08:00

Happy May Day!

The first time I consciously remember holding an affection for mathematics was in the Fifth Grade. Everyday after lunch we would pick up our notebooks and walk next door to study math for an hour. Before that I know I loved science and engineering, but I do not remember how serious I was about it. The space shuttle Challenger blew up when I was in the Fourth Grade. I know I was disturbed quite a bit. I thought it was great that a school teacher was going up into outer space. More than that I thought it was amazing that we could do it at all. My dad says I cried when the shuttle exploded, but not for the people on board, because I did not understand how such a wonderful machine could just explode. My compassion for people had grown by the time the Columbia burned up on reentry, and while my primary concern was for the astronauts' families, I still mourned (just a little bit) the loss of such wonderful technology we so easily hurled around the world. The bottom line is we probably will never be complete masters of science and mathematics no matter how much effort and knowledge we throw at it.

Mathematics is often called the universal language. This has had just one meaning to me until recently which is that mathematics is the language that everybody understands, but how about this meaning as well - mathematics is the language in which the universe speaks to us. Early mathematicians believed that. I think that is what made them so great. When I was in the Ninth Grade and beginning to learn about Geometry for the first time in depth Pythagoras was introduced to me. He never escaped mention for the rest of my career with mathematics. He lived 2500 years ago! He is still a household name! Two hundred years later Euclid lived and wrote The Elements, which was THE authority in mathematics until the Twentieth Century AD, and it is still considered highly authoritative. The only reason it fell from its exalted position to a slightly less exalted position was because it starts with five propositions and the fifth was dubbed as erroneous. Who has not heard of Sir Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein? The thing these people had in common was their faith in God and the belief that mathematics and science ultimately lead to Him.

My own discipline of favor is biology, but that covers a fair amount of chemistry too. In college I learned more about photosynthesis than I ever wanted to know, but that may come in handy soon as I try to explore the presence of God in the product of photosynthesis. Before I get there though I will have to discuss basics of science, kind of lay down the ground rules, which I am hoping will also help me to organize my thoughts (which I consider, next to my ignorance, to be my main liability in this effort I am beginning). So I look forward to all the help I can recruit in this and look forward to seeing the results it will yield.

A Little Direction

2007-04-30T23:43:00.000-08:00

I am a brand new blogger. Before March of this year I heard of blogs in passing only and was never even remotely interested in any level of participation, not even reading. Then a very dear friend and strongly faithful Christian, whom I am sorry to be separated from by thousands of miles, invited me to his brand new blog site! Of course I would go! So, in order to leave a comment I had to join up.

Well, now I am happy to be introduced to blogging, but when I started my page, I just had no idea what to write about. I had no direction and was fresh out of ideas (which is a very sad state to start out in!). I know a little bit about science, a little bit about history, a little bit about Christianity and God, and I am very opinionated (in case you can't tell). So a little bit of direction is sneaking up on me. One of the things I absolutely believe without a doubt is that the existence of God, and that Jesus is God, can be proven by science. I would really like to explore in that direction with this blog site, along with the history of the Church, the history of science and mathematics, the way all of them affected each other and where they may be leading or what some of the possibilities are.

I would be really sorry though if this were always a one way conversation. It makes for really boring talks, so I have added my e-mail address to my profile and would welcome suggestions for my site via e-mail. Also If anyone has anything to say and would like that as a main topic in a post I would be happy to copy and past it out of an e-mail to me, unless of course I feel it is inappropriate or offensive, in which case you would get a return e-mail explaining why I object to the post. I think this could be a very edifying experience and pray that it will be successful and something that is good to read for everyone.

Salvation Is From the Jews

2007-04-29T00:16:00.001-08:00

The traditional view of salvation history begins with the fall of Adam and Eve, but I really disagree with such a position. It must really begin with Creation, seeing as God created all things through, for and after Christ. For the sake of keeping the peace, I will begin my brief discussion about history with the Fall. “From that tree you shall not eat; the moment you eat from it you are surely doomed to die.” Of course God was not lying to Adam. The price for sin is blood. When Paul said, “According to the law almost everything is purified by blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness,” he was not presenting new information to the Jews, he was simply emphasizing what they already knew to be true. Getting there was a long road though. The first time God purified the world was in Noah’s Flood. One theory I heard, which is purely speculation, but I like none the less (and makes good sense to me), is that God preserved Noah’s family because their blood was “pure” meaning it was untainted with the blood of angels, but that is another discussion. Shortly after Noah’s flood God brought Abram into the world and promised him to make a great nation of him because of his faith. Three generations later He saved Abraham’s family from starvation by placing one of the children in a position of authority in Egypt, where he had knowledge of the coming famine and the prudence and position to prepare for it. Four hundred years later the Israelites needed salvation from their gracious hosts of old. With the night of the Passover, the political nation of Israel was born and the people who had found God’s favor found themselves being brought to the foot of Mount Sinai, where they were to receive the Law of Moses and a formal system of restitution and forgiveness.

For the first time in history man and God had an opportunity to share in a bond never experienced on Earth outside the Garden of Eden – that of mans’ sins covered over in the blood of restitution. This was very specific and many requirements had to have been met in order for the sacrifice to be a valid offering to God. The sacrifices had to be in the right place, performed by the right people with the right animals. The priests had to be ordained ministers and wear the right clothes. God’s decision on who were to fulfill all these “rights” rested on Abraham’s faithfulness. The unique relationship the Israelites shared with the Lord through the Law bore many fruits. It put them in a place of moral, spiritual, physical and mental superiority to the rest of the world. This was God’s family. They were His people and it was the Law that was the vehicle that brought them to this exalted position. Without the opportunity to stand before God without the burden of sin on their persons, they would not have been able to achieve anything more than mediocrity.

This was the stage the Christ stepped out onto. In the fullness of time, God came down from Heaven and made His dwelling among us. If Jesus is truly the manifestation of God then Mary is the personification of the perfect Jewish society, but that is also a different discussion. Because the blood of goats and lambs did not remove the stain of sin and completely restore man to God, a better sacrifice was called for. God wanted a better relationship, one made perfect. While the Law was perfect, the sacrifice did nothing more than cover the sins of the people and they had to make the same sacrifice over and over again. “For this I was born and for this I came into the world,” is what Jesus told His disciples. With the backdrop of salvation history, the world was ready to move on to the perfection of the person and work of Christ Jesus the Lord through the framework given to the Israelites in the Law. This would be a valid sacrifice made in the right place, by the right people who wore the right clothes in a perfect framework for the forgiveness of sins once and for all.

Jesus and the Jews

2007-04-22T21:30:00.000-08:00

The angel Gabriel declared unto Mary and she conceived of the Holy Spirit, "Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done unto me according to your word," and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. Being a Jew and growing up in the Jewish religious tradition was the desire and goal the Lord God our Father. From the beginning of all time He wanted to redeem His people, His family. This was deduced by the fact that Christ was the first born of all creation. The Jewish people were chosen by God from the beginning. This is plainly obvious to me because of how God relates to time. Because all things are instantaneously present to the Lord, He has the choice of all things for all time at the instant of creation.

St. Augustine developed "Replacement Theology" which asserts the promises made to the Jews which were unfulfilled were inherited by Christians and lost to the Jews by their unbelief. Let me quote the great Pope Benedict XVI. "God is not pleased by blood, and not acting reasonably is contrary to God’s nature." This quote has been taken out of context, he was speaking about using the force of arms as an instrument of evangelizing, but the argument applies to this discussion none the less. If not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature, then that is true in every aspect of His creation. Is it reasonable to choose a people out of the world to be your own, to favor them more than any other people, to manifest yourself among them, then to reject them when you know from before any single one of them was created the exact way you will be treated by them? Absolutely not! Is it reasonable to lie to someone by promising them something when you know before hand they will not keep faith then refuse them the promise? No, that is malicious. God is not capable of giving a promise to someone that will not be fulfilled because He sees the parade in its entirety at a single instant. He is continuously present to all time. He is outside of time. That is why St. Augustine was mistaken in his theology of Christian replacement. He was on the right track though, just one lane over.

Gentile Christians will share in the promises of the Jews. Scripture is very clear on this matter. Where St. Augustine went wrong is not keeping up with the times. When the New Testament writings were written Christianity was considered a Jewish sect. It was a schismatic denomination of Judaism. By the time St. Augustine lived the Church population had radically changed. It was now mostly Gentile. Looking into a discussion between Jews and knowing the truth was being spoken one to another, St. Augustine mistakenly included himself in the class of Jewish Christians. He was a Gentile, not a Jew! "For if you were cut off from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and were grafted contrary to nature into a cultivated olive tree, how much more shall these who are the natural branches be grafted into their own olive tree?" In this passage the olive tree represents God's promises to the Jews, the Gentiles are the branches of the wild olive tree and the Jews are the branches of the cultivated tree, so the Church as She exists today is obviously not a Jewish Church but a Gentile Church. The cultivated tree has been populated with "wild branches" but the ownership of the promises remains in the hands of the Jews. By grace we are included and are able to receive "the crumbs which have fallen from the children's plates."

The main point of it all is that Jesus is a Jew. He went to the Temple and to the synagogues, He was a rabbi, He celebrated the Jewish feasts, He spoke Hebrew and read the Torah. To the best of my understanding He never read The Acts of the Apostles, or the Epistle to the Romans, or an Epistle of St. Peter, or the Revelation to St. John. When He spoke to the gathered crowds He never quoted St. John Chrysostom, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, St. Hilary, Pope Leo, St. Aquinas, St. John of the Cross, or any other great saint of ours. That all belongs to our Christian tradition. He quoted Moses, Isaiah and Elijah. The Jews are still His people, His family and the rightful heirs of the kingdom, because where He is His family belongs, and He will draw them unto Himself and the natural branches shall be grafted back into their own cultivated olive tree.

Jesus and Time

2007-04-21T20:00:00.000-08:00

Since all theology must lead to Jesus, let me develop the person of the Lord Jesus keeping in mind what was discussed in God and Time. There are three separate aspects of Christ Jesus the Lord, and they appear in that order in God's Creation. The first to appear was Christ, which means "Anointed". This is an office of the Lord. It was the "first born of all creation." The fulfillment of that office is the salvation of mankind, so before all else was created God created the Christ, through whom all else was created. The second is Jesus, the human. He came into the world at the time of the Annunciation. He was formed in the image that fancied the Father. The Father knew what He wanted to look like before He began His endeavor of creation. The third aspect is the Lord, or master. There are many different lords. We have landlords, men of noble birth, a peer of the realm, and on and on, but Jesus is the Lord of lords. He is God.

I have heard many people say that Christians have the fullness of God's revelation of Himself to man in the person of Jesus Christ, which is not entirely true. We do have the fullest revelation of God to man, but it is not yet complete. More will be revealed. This is established by St. Paul in saying, "Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man that which God has prepared for those who love Him." Then again he said, "At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then face to face. At present I know partially; then I shall know fully as I am fully known." One of the ways in which we can approach the Lord is through science. Just as the church fathers sought to know Him and explain Him through philosophy, we can seek Him and seek to explain Him through science. Surely, science will leave evidence of the existence of God. His fingerprints are everywhere in the universe, we only have to learn to read them.

Jesus is light. St. John said, "The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world." Then quoting Jesus, he said, "I am the light of the world." Every single time I ever heard someone speaking publicly on these verses and similar verses the only thing they ever mentioned was the metaphorical aspect of things, but that is not the only component to these verses. While what these people said is certainly true, Jesus enlightens our hearts and minds, He is also physical light. When we enjoy the the beating of the warm sun on our skin, that is the Lord Jesus we are feeling the direct touch of. When we watch the sun rise over the eastern mountain ranges or gaze out the window at the hustle-bustle of midday, that is the Lord Jesus making that possible through His presences in the form of light waves (will you ever look at Easter Vigil the same again while paying attention to the extinguishing of the candles and illumination of the sanctuary?). Jesus is continuously present to all time. He is omnipresent. This did not come to be by virtue of being God, but by virtue of being light.

We were made in the image of God. This speaks of the image of Jesus Christ. God knew He wanted to be about six feet tall with two arms, two legs, a symmetric body, ten or twelve fingers, roughly, etc. etc. This gives great dignity to all men and women, no matter what their creed, color or culture is.This all leaves much to be discovered, and much to be revealed. How is Jesus light? We don't understand, but we know it is true. How are we made in the image of God? Also, we do not know for certain, but the answer goes much deeper than the sermons usually given. Science can answer some of these questions we have, but not all, which we also already knew by the writings of St. Paul.

God and Time

2007-04-18T21:57:00.000-08:00

When I was young I had a hard time wrapping my mind around what time meant to God and how He related to it, but it always fascinated me. Consequently, I spent a lot of time thinking about it, ever since I was a little boy. One day my dad drew an example that I was able to understand very well. He explained that we experience time like a spectator standing on a street corner watching a parade go by. We see the band approaching, then the various cars, civic groups and floats going by one at a time in a progression. God, on the other hand, sees the parade from the vantage point of a helicopter. He can take it in all at the same time and sees everything from the beginning to the end all in the same instant.

My understanding of it has developed a little, but the basics remain the same. All things were completed at the instant of creation. Even though things have not come to pass for those of us bound by time, they have already been completed in, for and through the Lord. That is why He can tell us the future and make promises to us and tell us if we do this then this will happen, or if we do something else, something else will happen. That is also why the psalmist can quote God saying, "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you." That is also how the Christ was the first born of all creation. God wanted to create all things through Him, and that is exactly what He did. That is why prayer is timeless. From the beginning of all creation God knew us and our prayers and our souls. That is why Moses told us that for God a single day is like a thousand years and a thousand years is like a single day.

Popular science tells us that to exceed the speed of light means we will achieve the ability to travel backwards in time, but that is wrong. Einstein said that we would never be able to achieve the speed of light because as we approach it time slows down. I propose that we will never achieve the speed of light because when we do that we will experience time as God does. To me it is the only explanation of physics that makes sense. If time stops and we continue in our existence then we will not reverse the clock but will become omnipresent. Because God knows we are not ready for something of that order He will intervene to prevent that from happening just as He did with the Tower of Babel.

The Flight Into Egypt

2007-04-08T17:19:00.000-08:00

There has always been an image in my mind of St. Joseph leading a donkey which bears the Blessed Virgin carrying the Baby Jesus on a long walk through the wilderness to a tiny Egyptian village in the middle of the desert to wait out the storm of King Herod's wrath. I never found that fully satisfying though. There are only two references to the Holy Family's flight to Egypt that I am aware of in Holy Scripture and I can not ever recall hearing any Catholic theologian speak extensively on the issue. In essence the trip is in an intellectual and historical black out for me, but none the less interesting.

Let's set the stage for their flight from Israel. In the Fourth Century BC the city of Alexandria was founded and Egypt was reborn with a new capitol, a new religion, a new dynasty and a new idea. The Ptolemaic idea was to build an empire based on knowledge. This was masterfully accomplished and the city became the intellectual center of the world. In the middle of the First Century BC Alexandria was acquired by the Roman Empire, but the intellectual dream lived on. At the city's founding it was about one third Jewish and by the early years of the First Century AD the city had grown to a population of one million with a Jewish population two hundred thousand strong (not insignificant). In fact, it was the largest Jewish population in the world outside of Israel and Judea and birthplace of the Septuagint. It had a large synagogue and would have been a community familiar to the Holy Family, and it was close by both land and sea. St. Joseph would have found employment easily and the transition would look almost seamless to my eye. So, the more I learn about Alexandria, the more I begin to believe this is exactly the place Jesus celebrated His first birthday.

Aside from all that there was quite an interesting Jewish fellow by the name of Philo who was born into affluence in Alexandria in the year 20 BC. He enjoyed all the privileges of Roman citizenship and led a life devoted to casting Jewish tradition in a Greek philosophic light. He is credited by Justin Pollard and Howard Reid (in their book The Rise and Fall of Alexandria) with bringing the idea of "The Word" to Jewish tradition, thus setting the foundation for Christianity. He wrote extensively on Jewish tradition and had a classical education to compliment his Jewish heritage. As I read the brief account of his work I could not help but think of how God might have been working to perfect His work on earth by introducing Jesus to this man in the prime time of his educational formation. Could God have been working to establish His Church while preserving His Son from Herod's jealousy?

Church History

2007-04-04T22:01:00.000-08:00

So I dropped out of college with two and a half semesters left to earn a BSN degree in order to pursue a marriage (only God knows whether or not that was a good idea seeing as the marriage did not last). Now my life is beginning to settle down again and I am getting back on my feet and I thought about finishing a degree. I know I do not want a nursing degree as I previously sought, but where do I go from here? In examining my life and looking where I might be most useful and find a fulfilling endeavor I thought about a major in history with a minor in philosophy. Then I thought if I am going to major in history I would love to specialize in the history of the Church if I continue my education. Now that involves a lot of work! I would imagine you need a firm command of Latin, Greek and Hebrew just to start, then look at the history of Israel, Greece, Italy, Germany, France, Spain, England, Russia, North Africa, the US, and where else? I would imagine to really appreciate it all you need more than the rudiments of anthropology. But then what do you do with all that information? I have no idea what historians do besides teach. Writing books is not something I would like to depend on as a source of income. So, now I have found something I could really dig into with all my enthusiasm, but I have no idea what to do afterwards with it! If anyone knows what historians do with their degrees or if anyone wants to chat about history or just have your opinion heard, I would love to hear what you have to say.

The Pauper Apostle?

2007-03-22T19:17:00.000-08:00

How many times have you heard a homily preached on the poor apostles, poor fishermen. Has it ever sounded goofy? Have you ever thought about the wealthy apostles? I will not presume to make such a definitive statement that the priests have all been wrong who have spoken about the poor apostles, but I do challenge you to think about the arguments I make and question yourself, "Could the apostles really have been some of the wealthiest people in Israel?"

One of the arguments I hear frequently is a quote from Jesus, "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the Kingdom of God." Most people forget to add the rest of the conversation though, "All things are possible for God," and we should not forget, in the Jewish tradition wealth is a sign of God's favor.

So there is Jesus standing in Peter's boat calling Peter to follow Him. Let's put this scene into perspective. The two markets for fish were in the towns of Caesarea and Tiberius. Peter is in the family business, his family are commercial fishermen. This is no small operation. Once the fish are taken out of the Sea of Galilee they have to be delivered to the market as fresh fish, so they have to be iced. Then someone needs to stay at the market and sell the fish. How many boats were in their fleet? At least two, of course, but there is nothing that says there were not more. These were not small boats either. They were big enough to fit Jesus and all His apostles on board. This is no small investment. Before outfitting a fishing boat today you will easily spend 2.5 million dollars. The nets alone cost 200,000 dollars or more. Then you need hooks, charts, repair equipment, and what else?

Then there is Matthew, the tax collector. Could he be "Peter's IRS Man" or his business accountant, advising Peter's family on the ins and outs of Roman tax law, making a decent living on a portion of the lucrative fishing industry in the Sea of Galilee?

How about Joseph of Arimathea? He was one of the wealthiest men in the Roman Empire. He traded tin from England. He was also the great uncle of the Blessed Virgin. That is why Jesus ended up in his tomb. Mary's marriage was arranged with Joseph when she was a young teen. With such a wealthy family would her parents arrange a marriage to a poor carpenter, or was St. Joseph more than a craftsman of simple hand tools? Could a carpenter really be more like a home builder? In that case, Jesus would have been born into wealth, only to gain more from the Kings of the East who paid him homage. There were three gifts, but were there only three kings? Did each of them only bring one gift each, or could there have been a wagon train coming from the east with each king bringing gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh? I will place myself in their shoes. If I were a king, with plenty of wealth at my disposal, and I knew of the birth of a King in the west, someone so special I thought it important to travel hundreds of miles to bring Him gifts at His birth, be certain I would bring a gift worthy of the moment, not a small token of my admiration.

Now it is getting late, but I will finish this post soon.

Cultivating Roman Spirituality in Alaska

2007-03-12T23:03:00.000-08:00

What is the best way for a layman to deeply impact the spirituality of a diocese? I have thought long on this question. Conservative talk radio is preaching to the choir. Writing books does the same thing. Bill O'Reilly does a good job at voicing a traditional opinion in the public arena, but how many lay people command that kind of media attention? No one can gain legitimacy standing on a street corner and accosting the public. Prayer works, but it must be accompanied by action.

So I matured as a Christian in Fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada. Yes, in decadent, Sin City there lives a deep spiritual community capable of nursing a spiritual infant to full manhood ready to feast on solid food. The parish I attended probably seated somewhere in the neighborhood of 1200 people in the sanctuary and there was standing room only every Sunday-and seven Masses! It seamed to me as if the whole valley was coming in to worship the Lord. Becoming a part of the Catholic community and thriving was never a problem. I know this is to a large extent an inside job, but none the less we are called to live in a community of Believers as well and our life as a Christian is diminished if we do not (religious hermits excluded, of course). Now I find myself in Anchorage, Alaska and longing for the spiritual life I experienced in Las Vegas.

So far the best idea I came up with on my own is to try to start a Latin class under the direction and with the blessings of the Archdiocese of Anchorage. As of yet, I have no idea where to do it, only slim clues on how to find others interested in learning Latin and no one to direct our formation. I know, it is not much of a plan yet, but I am hoping it will begin to develop a heartbeat soon! My thinking is Latin would be much more appealing to learn if we truly had a significant reason to learn it and an occasion to utilize it other than in the self indulgent pride of being able to boast that we can read Vergil in his own language. So if we pray the Liturgy of the Hours in Latin as a part of learning Latin that would be, in my mind, fulfilling. A German saying goes, if you want to think like a German, you have to talk like a German. I strongly believe the language we use heavily influences our though life and thought patterns. In this line of thinking, Latin may be a way of bringing us into closer communion with the Saints, especially if used in our prayer life, and the Liturgy of the Hours is always an excellent way to strengthen the individual, the community and the Church as a whole.